Diary of a Heretic

Fletcher Rising

 

 He drank the minimum to maintain. At first, of course, maintaining at the theatre where he and Dickie had directed “Little Shop of Horrors” was nearly impossible. By the time the musicians had shown up, Dickie had contracted his first pneumonia.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

But two weeks ago, when Brooke gave him headphones, the music of Fletcher’s youth had turned him into a righteous punk. He still drank but to little effect.

In the meantime, while Brooke tried to revive the embalmed American tragedy, Fletcher woke to find the imaginary playhouse where he and Dickie traded lines from Noel Coward plays was gone—the echoing mausoleum had become a heap of cinders.

Sweeping up the psychic mess, he staggered. A jolt shot through a quarter century of nonexistence. For Dickie had said repeatedly—not his last words, but nearly, “Promise me, you won’t live in the past.”

How had Fletcher forgotten that? Sorrow forced him into oblivion and martinis kept him there.

Then as Friday night moved far into Saturday, Fletcher’s anxiety could not be calmed by gin or anything like it. His mind demanded clarity, because if he were reasonable, Brooke was fine.

Yes, yes, and yet—he paced and smoked, and found that slurping the usual only magnified his distress. The fog of alcohol dissipated his faith that the girl would incapacitate anyone in her path—one kick even without those stiletto heels.

At twoe a.m., he rang Sung in London. Because Sung, who hadn’t seen anything remarkable about Brooke at first, considered her kindness to his cousin Rhee the purest act of generosity in western civilization. What American girl gives up an hour every day to follow a maladjusted monk’s instructions issued through a Plexiglas wall?

After six rings—a message to leave a message. “Nothing urgent, Sung. Just hello.”

…What the hell had Bond said to Brooke Thursday evening?

All day Friday, she was restless and irritable. And after she left, Fletcher hurried upstairs where her laptop remained open to Ms. Kyle’s profile. Brooke must have some  kind of proof of a liaison between her boyfriend and the insipid twit.

Had Fletcher imagined Brooke’s lawless lover was capable of betraying her, he would have forbidden phone calls. Just see if he allowed another!

Although, either way he wanted Brooke to learn that so-called sexual fidelity was among society’s worst perverse fallacies. Most men occasionally behaved like dogs. For all he knew, women did too.

It had been Fletcher’s fondest fantasy that were she a seventeen-year-old he, the cocky imp would ride Manhattan like a merry-go-round—and then race home to Fletcher, eager to bestow upon him one delectation after another.

Tonight, however, he realized how wrong, how thoroughly untenable, his musings had been. The child he had known since her infancy, stripped down and stepped up to where anyone on earth would welcome her without question or documentation, now embodied an “eternal feminine.” One only a gay man could cherish, because living archetypes deserved devotion, not lust.

At three a.m., he fell briefly asleep before a plaintive song sounded from his mobile. He had pushed the wrong button.Fletcher turned on the light and pushed call-waiting, hoping to hear Brooke rushing; she was on her way. Last week Bond had sent Fletcher an MP3 meant for Brooke. Her errant lover’s rich, warm tenor bent a lamenting tune, as he played three guitar chords (not well).

But it was her father. “Where-zzz-are-ya?”

“Where are you, Jimmy?”

(About to pass out in Fletcher’s Woodstock driveway.) “Leave immediately or I’m sending the police!”

“Didcha tell Connie ’bout us or was it the she-devillin’ bitch?”

“Connie’s always known; I verified it.” Jimmy was fading but Fletcher yelled at him: He’d spend the money to help Jimmy—providing he went directly into rehab. The spoiled priest grunted and coughed. Connie had already told him that. Fletcher would accompany them if he wished. “Fuck off, ya whorin’ sodomite.”

Fletcher hung up. All he cared about was Brooke. And after he fretted and fussed and promised the heavens one thing after another, she was still missing by rehearsal time Saturday. Waiting too long, he had no choice but to don his Kangol and hope he could imitate Dickie’s graceful wit.

On stage, the mother in “Pious Lies,” whom Fletcher admired, hastened to explain she was completely off-book, but that she and Brooke opted to keep the words in hand until every phrase indicated she had known her husband’s secret all along. (“What wife doesn’t?” she and Brooke had agreed.)

Fletcher nodded. “You’re doing that so naturally, Annie, one forgets the challenge.”

As for the men whose vocal work remained comical, he suggested they focus elsewhere for now. Perfection was impossible while striving for it.

 Pleased with himself in the taxi home, he paused at the front door. Please let Brooke have returned, safe and happy. But no. He tried Sung again, no answer. And Bond? Wait until that criminal cur rang again—just wait!

Another sleepless night. Fletcher watched Douglas Sirk movies, saving those starring Rock Hudson until daylight. The doorbell rang at noon and Fletcher ran downstairs and swooped the nearly naked girl into the air. Putting her down, he turned away—God knows what showed on his face. Brooke had lost her keys. She sank onto the floor weeping. He lifted her to the couch and she wept through three wash clothes before noticing he was frantic she might be hurt.  

 “Just disgraced. I smoked super-weed with a guy I knew in high school. He swore it wasn’t dusted but afterwards I slept more than twenty-four hours.”

 

 

 

(click here for the next episode)

One Night Stand

 

The first time Brooke stepped from a taxi wearing a strapless mini-dress and towering high heels, the doorman had hurried over and issued her inside while a throng of equally underdressed young women stood shivering behind a velvet rope.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

Last week she had tried a nightclub where one wall was a live-TV screen. The music pounded inside her and Brooke’s whole body followed. Watching herself in high-def had inspired her to imitate dances she’d seen in videos. The mix ended and—whadda ya know? Her first lover, the senior from Boiceville, bobbed in her face.

Pivoting, Brooke had run away with no intention of returning. But, now of course, her intention had changed.

Only nine o’clock and people crowded the bar. Brooke stood in a corner and watched her loutish ex-lover guzzling beer. Hard to believe—but seven months ago, still in high school, she was still having sex with that jerk-off.

How infuriated Tara had been! When he insulted Brooke, Tara had called him out. Yet despite Brooke not even liking him, she had hopped into his car for silent sex all through May and part of June.

Not April, though: During spring break, he invited her to watch “Palimony” (as had Matthew once but didn’t—stop thinking about him!) The movie opened and the senior had dissed handsome Mr. King. Without a word, Brooke had walked thirteen miles home.

Then six weeks before graduation, the dumbass, who had never acknowledged her and hadn’t broken up with Miriam—Brooke asked her friends—pleaded with her in public. “Please, Brooke, I might never see you again.” His friends gathered behind him calling, “Please, Brooke, please.”

She hadn’t had sex with Matthew yet, just this idiot, and sorry, world, Brooke loved sex. Not Barbie dolls, not hair-bows, or cupcakes; not the frilly, silly nonsense of an idyllic girlhood (as defined by fathers, those ultimate girlhood-experts!) Brooke loved reckless abandon and multiple orgasms—that was her girlhood.

“Brooke! Hey, Brooke!” The senior from Boiceville (now a freshman at Pace) stumbled over. “You look incredible, Brooke. You’re so beautiful but—everybody says that.”

“No, most people say something else.”

“Not me, Brooke. I’ve always said you were beautiful.”

She let that go. They danced to a breakneck  mix until he screamed at her, “I gotta sit down.” And—this was a first—“I wanna talk to you.” He took her to Starbuck’s, slurring nonstop compliments.

“In school, people were scared of you, Brooke. You were, like, supernatural.”

“Were you scared?”

“Kind of, Brooke.”

“I’m done with high school,” she said. “I finished early.”

“I finished a year late. But my dad expects…You look as unreal as ever, Brooke.” (Sure, he was drunk, but for someone who had never said her name, now he couldn’t say it enough.)

“If I dress like this, nobody cards me.”

“Really, Brooke? I gotta show three IDs.”

She said, “You look grown up to me,” when really he looked fat. And, not for the first or twentieth time that night, she worried about getting through this. “Remember smoking pot in your car?”

“I’ve got the best ganga, Brooke, at my place downtown.”

The next morning, wearing his Van Halen T-shirt, her tiny dress draped on a chair, she wept into her hands. He tried to hold her but she pushed him away. He still said, “Don’t cry, Brooke. I care about you. I always have.”

“So you say, but I’ve gotta go.”

“Just a second.” He left the room.

She was buttoning her coat when he returned with a pipe packed tight. “Try this; it’s my roommate’s.”

She took the tiniest hit and asked, “What’s in it?”

“Nothing, Brooke. It’s optimum weed.”

She didn’t believe it. He had been lifting the pipe to his mouth but handed it back to her. “Try it again; you’ll see.”

Definitely laced, she thought; and after a few minutes, she fell back on his bed without waking up until Sunday.

(click here for the next episode)

Bond Girls

 On Friday, Fletcher asked Brooke to accompany him on his cigarette break. He removed his headphones and the tinny refrain leaked out, “You really got me girl. You got me so I can’t sleep at night…” Fletcher taunting her for keeping Matthew sleepless? Or a coincidence? She didn’t care.

And she wished she didn’t care that Matthew was fucking the new Bond girl. But she did care. Last night his voice on the phone sounded all wrong when he told her three times that she was his only lover—so wrong that what Brooke heard was the opposite.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

“Five minutes everyone,” Fletcher said, wrapping Dickie’s old aviator scarf around his neck. He set his Kangol on his head and held open the theater door. The stunted trees on 43rd Street shifted in the leaden air. Taking her arm, Fletcher said, “My dear, you’re uncanny at gathering the bits people drop as they try to hide something. But even in a play, the characters—and the audience—occasionally need an insignificant breath.”

“How do you know when you’re skulking around, plugged into your golden-olden hits cranked up full blast?”

He blew smoke rings in a series, one inside the other. “Mood swings, Brooke?”

“Lucky you and your testosterone.”

“Humph.” He stubbed out his Dunhill and—this always surprised her—bent down to pocket it. Fletcher never littered.

“Allow me,” Brooke said, but he wouldn’t think of it.

Back in rehearsal, she refrained from mentioning the characters’ speech patterns. But twice, the son in “Pious Lies” asked if he was getting the shaky bravado Brooke wanted. “It’s becoming uniquely yours.” If Brooke weren’t careful, she’d praise him as immoderately as she had Sasha, Matthew’s ex. You’re an original!

What an idiot she’d been. Sasha’s surprised agreement was probably her way of teasing Brooke. For a second she wondered again if she could have misinterpreted Matthew’s emphatic lie: You are my only lover. Yeah, right. He was fucking a Bond girl. And thanks to “the girl’s” aloofness, Matthew in England slept without dreaming. In retaliation, Brooke should sleep forever. Except the minute she didn’t exist, Matthew would have no reason on earth to stop fucking Bond girls. Girls so refined that his prowess, which flooded silly Brooke with ungodly pleasure, scarcely fluttered their eyelashes. In her own Matthew’s long, strong arms, Bond girls lay silent—sex without babble.

That evening in her bedroom, she searched IMDb and found twenty-six-year-old Kayla Ashton making her debut in “Readiness Is All” as Ms. Kyle, M’s assistant. Kyle was a pretty, round-face girl who boasted an extensive Barbie doll collection.

Barbie dolls? Really?

All right. If Matthew couldn’t resist Kyle that was his problem, not Brooke’s. Betcha his sexual attentions made those damn dolls scream and not the implacable girl who collected them.

Shit. Brooke hated feeling jealous. It was worse than being in love, which now felt exactly as billed—hopeless. Time to adjust her expectations and not succumb ever again to pettiness. Also, not lie and pretend she couldn’t be fucking happier for the plastic bride and groom topping Barbie’s wedding cake.

“God, Fletcher!” She shrieked and jumped. Without a cigarette or martini, he had been peering over her shoulder. “Nobody comes into my bedroom uninvited, not even Tara.”

“Had your door been closed, dear, I would have knocked. Last night you skipped your yoga class. And ordinarily by now, that stunt driver is teaching you to drive ninety miles per hour through traffic jams. I feared you had taken ill.”

“Fletcher, go get drunk and stop worrying about me.”

“Ah,” he tapped the screen, “are we investigating the new Bond girl? Tepid-looking thing.”

“But so polished, so detached. You better believe her daddy never smacks her big, round smiley-face.”

“You are so young, Brooke, you may not realize that the pose comes from a lackluster mentality.”

“Excuse me, Fletcher. My favorite DJ’s playing in Chelsea.”

“At your favorite club? That’s not Chelsea, Brooke. It’s the meatpacking district.”

No comment.

In the well-lit spacious bathroom, she applied dramatic eye makeup while Fletcher silently wondered why. Kyle was the daughter of an ignorant woman he had always disliked.

“Your nightclub, wherever it may be, doesn’t close before dawn.”

With an ironic smile, she straightened an abbreviated garment displaying her ideal feminine form to surreal advantage. Stepping into very high heels, she said, “If I don’t dress like this, they might card me.”

“I doubt that, child. You’re equally stunning with or without goose bumps. I was once a denizen at the same dance clubs. Therefore I know: even if you’re only dancing with the crowd, that crowd is promiscuous.”

“What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll get AIDS?”

Without looking at her, he stood and exited as quietly as he’d entered.

Shit and more shit! Not only was Brooke abominably excitable, she was vicious. Nimble in the highest heels, though, she ran downstairs where he was mixing a martini.

“I’m sorry, Sir Fletcher. What I said was mean and—”

“Apology accepted, beloved girl. It’s grotesque how sensitive I am. Dickie died years before you were born; in fact, well before even your boyfriend Mr. Bond was born.”

(click here for the next episode)

Distant Undercurrent

When their salads arrived, Kyle said, “I assume you know who my parents are.”

Matthew ate a cherry tomato. “The truth is I don’t.”

“My father,” Kyle said, “is a BBC producer and my mother is twice removed from Sir Elton John.”

Matthew heightened his James Bond accent. “Does that make you thrice removed, Kyle? Because I’ve met Sir Elton and see no resemblance.”

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

“We’re distantly related.” She sipped her second glass of wine.

Matthew grinned but Kyle continued determined and implacable with no hint of fun.  A waiter brought baked Norwegian salmon with sautéed greens and small potatoes.

“If you have sex with me tonight,” Kyle said, “I’ll be grateful.”

He glanced at her sidelong. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those hopeless romantics.”

“No, I’m not.”

Impatient enough to risk meanness, Matthew said,  “You must leave directly after we finish.” Here he expected her to confess that someone had dared her. But she said, “Excellent,” and finished her pineapple sherbet while he signed the bill.

Matthew forgot about her the minute she thanked him and closed his door behind her.

Available within running distance was a swimming pool cleaned with ultra-violet light, not chlorine. He swam underwater listening to Brooke call his name. Then he slept, woke, and waited forever. Close to midnight, Sung finally handed him a new mobile. “Tomorrow,” he said, “you’ll begin leading with your heart.”

In her third-storey, temporary bedroom on 110th Street, Brooke answered breathlessly. “Hi—hello!”

“Brooke—” his throat caught.

“Matthew! The beautiful clothes you bought me help when I’m doing rehearsals. Except today I kept thinking about you and shivering. So I’ve filled the bathtub with hot water.”

From deep in his chest, he said her name again.

And without him asking, Brooke described unbuttoning the red cashmere jacket he hadn’t seen her wear yet, the short kilt, black tights, tall boots, white blouse…

From a place not unlike the one they shared when making love, he murmured at first. But as he wrapped a fantasy tightly around them, his voice grew louder and slower and then thick and sweet. Until from faraway, a voice unleashed his name. And Brooke thought, Oh no, am I screaming?

He was on his knees. Please, Brooke, let me…

Yes—do that. She was dying for him and really screaming. She rushed like water from the highest waterfall and was rushing still when Matthew said, Christ and God and Jesus Fuck, Brooke, I Love You.

From across the Atlantic Ocean, they trembled and sighed as if gazing into each other’s eyes and then slipped together inside a hushed, hypnotic state. Matthew said he didn’t have the words to say what he wanted her to know. He needed to talk to her again and asked if she’d please sleep in his bed when she got home to Woodstock. “Monday night I’ll call at midnight, your time. Nobody will know but us.”

“All right.”

“You won’t feel sad because we’ll be on the phone.”

“No.” She wouldn’t feel lonely in his tower. And yes, when he called she’d be naked. Yes, she’d stand under the skylight. She’d jump in the silvery cast of the moon and stars.

“In four weeks I’ll be there for Christmas. And if between now and then you’ll sleep there, I’ll call home on Monday nights using a new phone every time.”

He told her about the soccer video where her legs spun in the air. And, don’t say anything, but did she know that whenever she was at the games, rooting for Dex, Connie focused on her? “I watch those videos of you, Brooke, over and over.”

She began to say Dex was playing in a championship game next week. But instead, she asked, “Is it because I scream? Is that why you say I’m your most excitable lover?”

“Brooke, you’re my only lover.”

“Oh.” She waited for the sonic waves to recede but a terrible undercurrent ran counter to all the times he had said, “I have always loved you, Brooke.” That was a metaphor. And this—she said nothing, because maybe she was not his only lover.

“Brooke, you are my only lover. If I ever implied a comparison, I was wrong. There’s no comparison. You are my only lover.”

But by the next morning his claim resounded. You are my only lover echoed relentlessly, meaning—he must be lying. Except he couldn’t be. He must be. He was.

(click here)

The Play's the Thing

Irritable and restless from alcohol and cigarette deprivation, Fletcher relied on Brooke to run the rehearsals while he sweated and quivered behind the last row.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

To Brooke, the thin, quick woman playing the mother in “Pious Lies” embodied the play’s spirit. Her wit appeared in little gestures and her movement punctuated every interaction.

After Fletcher had fed his addictions, he said, “Quite right. Pay attention to her approach; she’s an uncelebrated star.”

Brooke asked everyone’s advice before presenting her strategies and interpretations. In return, the actors and managers collaborated with her wholeheartedly, eager to spin the language and lift the tired plot.

Secretly, she worried that her favorite idea—to fit each character’s vocal patterns to a persona—was farfetched. In her head, she heard each voice clearly. But she had no idea how to describe styles of speech, let alone develop them.

Fletcher said, “Tut-tut, not to worry.” If the men sounded vaguely like Edward G. Robinson (the actor who played the father) and Jimmy Stewart (the son), they were actually on track. While the mother, the key, was farther along. She and Brooke were parsing the cadences of a housewife’s subversive sunniness.

During these hours, Brooke scarcely thought about Matthew. He probably breezed along making “Readiness Is All” the same way.

But Fletcher said, “Not according to Sung. Your boyfriend loves you so much, it’s killing him.”

“Don’t tell me I’m killing him, Fletcher. It’s unfair.”

“My dear, it’s a testament to your sublime nature.”

“I can’t stop you from reading our letters. But will you, please, not accuse me of hurting him?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. Bond’s the one who’s allowed his passion to run amuck. He’s the one who’s insanely jealous of me.”

She tossed her head. “That’s impossible, Fletcher. How could Matthew feel jealous of you?” (Unintentionally, she emphasized “you,” making Fletcher smile.)

“Answer this, genius tyke, who is living with you and who is not?”

“He’s grateful to you, Fletcher, not jealous. Did you know Matthew can sing? He could star in a musical.”

“I doubt—ah, that reminds me, child. ‘Jesus Christ Superstar?’ Can you take that abomination off my phone?”

She did, and downloaded the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kinks, the Who—all the top albums according to “Hey-day.”  And because Fletcher fancied himself a  homosexual seventies punk, she added the Sex Pistols.

Creeping behind him while he drank his morning tea, Brooke settled a new headset over his dyed hair—earphones in place.

“Good Lord!” He rose from his seat, his facing beaming—and sang, ‘Brown sugar how come you taste so good.’ He moved up and down in a tight circle. ‘…just like a young girl should.’ He strutted back and forth and when she declined to dance with him, he kissed her cheek.

The music calmed his cravings. Brooke showed him how to download whatever he wanted and from then on, he wore headphones to every rehearsal.

Soon after this, one of the actors said, “He’s not so bad. I’ve known worse.” The actor was Matthew’s age, playing the nineteen-year-old son (ha!), and Fletcher had pulled him aside the first week as Brooke gathered her things. Low but audible—Fletcher was always audible—he said, “Don’t you dare look at her, you rutting miscreant. Your attention  compares to a slobbering dog’s.”

Yet, this actor had known worse!

Brooke, however, refused to put up with it. She could take care of herself.

“Be that as it may, my dear, I know...mankind. Point to a specimen and I’ll tell you his tendencies, attitudes, and appetites.”

Suspecting he had spoken likewise to her driving instructor and Taekwondo teacher, Brooke said, “You’re doing what Pop did, Fletcher. And Pop doesn’t know the first thing about himself, does he?”

“You hurt me, dear. Your father treated you like a possession nobody else could touch but he was free to smash to smithereens. Would your Pop have arranged for your boyfriend to ring here tomorrow night?”

“Jez-us, Fletcher, really?” She jumped up, thrilled but then—halted. “Will you leave us alone? Or do you plan to listen in?”

“I hadn’t thought of that. Bond’s calling the landline so in theory you could talk to him in your room while I listen in mine.” He shuddered and winced convincingly. “Perish the thought! Your piquant missives enchant me, Brooke. And even your boyfriend’s labored efforts amuse me. But hearing your repetitious clamoring for each other? No, thank you. And should you indulge in phone sex, I shall scream bloody murder.”

“What’s phone sex?”

“Your boyfriend will know. Expect a titillating conversation. Tell him your ears have healed and are now as fetching as ever.”

“Sir Fletcher, I love you!” She spun on her toes. “Do you know what time?”

“I suggested before your yoga class.”

Fletcher hurried upstairs. Her happiness made him blush. The bewitching child, so innocent and so—blasphemy though it be—sexual, would make a god drool.

(click here for the next episode)

De Rigueur

 

Hearing her low, clear—annoyed—voice lifted him; Matthew felt really high.

Brooke was annoyed he had confused his nine-year-old son’s soccer vidoes. Of course, she knew her mother made and sent them. But did she have any idea that her mother’s camera zoomed in on her face for entire minutes? At any game she attended, Brooke was always in view. 

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

That’s why he had referred to a game in September and not the one on Sunday when she wasn’t there. 

That hat trick video, he would write to her later, is my secret indulgence. Every time Dex scores, you jump for joy. Your legs fly up, high and sideways. Those legs never leave my mind.

Could he write that to her? Everything he wrote gave way to clichés. Brooke’s letters to him were like songs: soulful, moving, and melodic. His answers to her frustrated him: kiss, love, heart, miss, ache, love. He wouldn’t blame her for laughing at him. In fact, it was better that she laugh. Because his serious jealousy and anxiety about losing her might drive her away. She might not stay long enough to realize his unchanging, unselfish, and absolute love for her.

Matthew vowed not to lose her—his dread of that never let up. Either of them could die suddenly. Or become stricken with a fatal illness. Although, like most people, he usually managed to push that aside. We are all the same; nothing to be done.

And yet for all that and more, he could lose her to one of his disastrous fits of stupidity. While acting, he often, unwittingly, lived like his character. In Manhattan last month, if Charelle hadn’t been so perceptive…But then again—he never really would have gone through with it. The idea was preposterous. Why use someone callously for which you will most likely hate yourself?

After tonight and tomorrow night, he’d ring her before her yoga class and hear her clear and perfect voice directed solely to him.

When a mild but efficient woman handed him a mirror, he refocused his attention. She removed the paper and little cape protecting James Bond’s Canali suit and white shirt from last minute touches of make-up. Brisk and fond, the women in pretties remarked on how handsome he was, whether muddied and singed, or as now: shoes shined, nails trimmed, Turnbull & Asser tie nicely knotted. “Makes our job easy,” they said.

Approaching the set of the Multi-National office building (Multi-National being the cover for England’s Special Operations), Matthew met Kayla Ashton near the Devonshire Street façade. “How do you do?” said the 26-year-old actress playing M’s assistant, Ms. Kyle.

“Mind if I call you Kyle? It’s a good name for you.”

“If you noticed that, can you tell—” she turned, on display, “if you like me? I was told we’re supposed to have an affair.”

“Another change in the script?”

“Not at all,” she said. “I was promised a brief but real…thing.”

“Who promised you a thing, Kyle?”

“Everyone.”

Rolling:

She follows him through a revolving door and they enter separate lifts. He strolls through the busy second-floor and turning a corner greets his beautiful secretary. She tells him, as she does (almost) every day, “Poor dear, another eight hours of paperwork.”

“I suppose that’s so.”

Inside his small, windowed office, he sits down and turns on a monitor. His secretary’s voice pours like honey from a speaker. “Perhaps relief’s at hand. She’s been expecting you since nine o’clock.”

Cut to M’s anteroom where Ms. Kyle says, “M said to make you wait twenty minutes.” And,“Sit here and flirt with me.”

“I never flirt.”

“Yes you do, James. You and I are famous for it.”

Harold was right: a brief easy scene in which M tells him about Otto and Ib, Kang and Chun.

Later that afternoon, Kyle conspicuously watched Matthew’s fencing lesson until Sung ordered her to leave.  After he’d showered and changed, she was waiting for him along the tree-lined garden path. “I double-checked. You are supposed to have an affair with me. It’s…de rigueur.”

“Really, de rigueur? The rules have changed,” Matthew said. “Without a voluntary clause I suppose it’s cut, wrap, and go have sex.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Kyle said without a hint of humor.

“What did you do to double-check?”

“You mean to make certain it’s de rigueur? I asked one of the executives who promised me.”

“Aren’t there established preliminaries?” Matthew asked. “How do these de rigueur affairs ensue?”

“I imagined you would know. You’re the movie star.”

“Hm. Perhaps we should dine together and let people photograph us.”

“All right. You take me to dinner and then to bed.”

“Kyle,” Matthew said. “You can’t be serious.”

(click here for the next episode)

Above Ground

For the next sequence of “Readiness Is All,” Pinewood’s huge 007 studio procured mudflats, ancient ruins, and mazes of shifting terrain.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

An assistant brought the slate and Harold nodded—action:

Bond and Otto chase each other through rocky swamps, taking cover behind igneous outcroppings. A shadow lifts and Bond leaps after Otto. Tricks of light skew his aim but a bullet nicks Otto’s arm. And when the Dane fires five rounds of his Glock, a rotting tree bursts apart. The men stagger through oily mud where they lose their guns. Material adheres to Otto in clumps but appears in streaks on Bond’s wet skin, his clothes ripped to shreds.

Later, after suffering swarms of CGI mosquitoes, Otto flung his real sweat at Bond. When Matthew, glancing sideways, retaliated in kind, the director roared for more.

An ancient death pit crumbles at Bond’s approach and he flies backwards. Otto slams into him as a swathe of sea opens beneath their feet. Villain and hero grab overhead branches and swing onto the same precarious ledge.

Otto nudged Matthew—not to knock him into the sea—but to point out unscripted sharks. Deadpan, he crossed his arms, flapping them open and shut.

Everyone laughed, including Harold, who said, “That’s a keeper—Otto, stop clowning around.”

Otto disappears underground, leaving Bond stranded among mossy hills riddled with explosives. Alert to every impending blast, he jumps free, handsomely singed.

Matthew’s reactions sprang from the intimate charges besetting him in real life. Harold signaled for tight, split-second shots whenever Matthew’s eyes darkened from blue to glittering black.

After checking the video assist, Sung and Harold agreed Matthew was riveting—no need for sports milk; he couldn’t look better.

Privately, however, Sung continued to warn him against overdoing his work-outs. “You train longer and harder when you’re separated from her.”

“Maybe so.”

To his surprise, Matthew resumed sleeping—his first solid, dreamless nights since falling in love with her. These gripping black-outs bewildered him. His distress lightened over the weekend when he received a sly, romantic “Natasha” letter. Connie sent videos of Dex’s late season soccer games. Brooke wasn’t in them, however, so he watched reruns. He watched the reruns more than he should, but nobody complained. Matthew had always wanted, perhaps needed, people to like him. And he asked Sung if he was participating enough in the filmmaking “family.” Everyone thought well of him, Sung said. “And why not? You’re available when anyone asks.”

During Taekwondo at four a.m., he told Matthew to assume the best.

“I used to do that to a fault.”

Sung said, “I’ve heard people say you used to glide away too easily. But now they trust you.”After a light breakfast, they practiced fencing for an hour.

Matthew stood on the strip and raised his foil in salute.

Sung answered and Matthew lunged.

Sung crossed-over and Matthew doubled and missed.

Sung flicked his shoulder. “Fletcher says to call the landline Thursday evening before eight. She takes yoga.”

Matthew raised an eyebrow, circled a beat, and said, “Thank you.”

Sung executed a compound attack. “You must use my phone, remember.”

Matthew counter-attacked but lost tempo and Sung smoothly changed their engagement. “Try your counter-attack again, please.”

During their practice, Sung referred to a tradition of men saving face and women accepting it. But of course, he emphasized, Matthew had done nothing wrong. “What may occur tomorrow,” Sung said, “needs no apology.” His blade enveloped Matthew’s.

“Sung, do you know something I don’t?”

“If I guessed at what comes next, it might not.” He doubled through a complete circle.

Matthew counter-attacked successfully.

Afterwards, Harold, whom Matthew hadn’t realized was watching, invited him to breakfast. Since Matthew had already eaten, he drank tea seated with the director at a white-clothed table.

“Brilliant fencing. Bloody brilliant.”

Matthew thanked him but said in truth, he needed to improve a great deal. Harold wasn’t worried and wondered if Matthew minded another change in schedule. That morning Otto would disappear inside an unmarked tomb. His accomplice Ib waits in a yacht with Otto’s lover Kim-Jo. When the pick-up boatman finds only Bond on the Korean island—no Otto—he takes him to the Danish ship.

“Let’s finish with you climbing into the small boat but then switch to the office scenes,” Harold said. “You and Ms. Kyle and M. So easy we might wrap the first scene tonight.”

“That makes sense,” Matthew said.

“Not entirely but I’ve been working with Kim-Jo. I’d have better luck directing a trained terrier.”

Matthew smiled at the exaggeration. “We’ll go slowly.”

Harold buttered a scone. “I’m in love with a child, and not a cunning one.”

“We can try different approaches, dry runs—anything you—and she—like.”

“Thank you,” Harold said. “Sung says you have the patience of a Buddhist monk.”

Matthew took fifteen minutes every afternoon to phone his kids at their bedtime. On Mondays and Tuesdays he imagined Brooke waiting to read to them. Twice he had heard her protesting when Dex said he worried about her in the city—something he talked about at length when she was staying with Fletcher.

Once Matthew asked if Dex worried the same way about Tara. “She’s in the city more.”

But Dex said that was different. “Tara doesn’t look like Brooke.”

That day, Ivy told him she and Chase set the table. “He always remembers to turn the knife facing the plate.” She was such a sweet, happy child, and so smart Matthew sided with nurture over nature. Her precocious intelligence must result from the Logan’s influence.

Dex asked, “Did you get my soccer video? Our team’s in the championship.”

“Congratulations, Dex. Your hat trick’s incredible.”

“What hat trick?”

At this, he heard Brooke’s voice clearly (annoyed.) “He means in September.”

“Dad, on Sunday I passed the ball to Kevin. He used to score all the time so I took assists.”

(click here for the next episode)

Right-of-Way

After retrieving his luggage, Matthew watched the cold, grey rain from beneath an overhang. A red sports car honked, Sung at the wheel. Matthew tossed his bags in back and slid into the passenger seat. “Sung! Good to see you.”

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

“I’m late to greet you properly, Matthew. You look as if you’ve slept.”

“Several hours.” Strapped in the jet, he had attempted to write Brooke a letter that would delight her. But he had grown damp and exhausted from trying to capture only the sunny, lapping waves of a treacherous ocean. His nap brought forth syncopated masculine shadows beckoning her while she hid from him.

“Nice car,” Matthew said.

“Harold got me a six-month lease. It’s a Jaguar XKR.”

“Six months? Will we be here that long?”

“It turns out we’re filming all of Seoul in the studios. That’s what took the set-designers an extra week. We’ll have ten days for Mount Hallasan and the forested Lost World—places that look unreal in real life.”

“Lots of digital production,” Matthew said.

“True, but more live action than most action movies. We start tomorrow. Are you hungry?”

“Not really, but I haven’t eaten breakfast.”

“I heard of Brooke’s troubles, of course, but you look refreshed. She makes you happy. Be double scrupulous, Matthew.”

“How fast does this go?”

“Too fast. I wanted it because I met a woman who drives this car—when I took Fletcher’s Aston Martin to the repair shop. Against form, Andrea Lee and I became close immediately. She’s another incentive to reside in Woodstock.”

“Sung, I’m happy for you.”

“She probably won’t visit me. She prefers I visit her.”

“Does that suit you?”

“It does. I’m not like you, Matthew, although I once had passion for a girl. Once and never again because she married my friend while I was training for the Olympics.”

“I’m sorry.” A lost love—and his family: Fletcher had said Sung’s parents and sisters drowned in a boating accident the day before his Taekwondo competition. Determined to win for his family’s honor, he had been eliminated in the first round.

“My passion was real but not strong, Matthew. If I had married Mi-sun, I wouldn’t have my work.”

Matthew hadn’t known until recently what good friends Sung and Fletcher were. Apparently, they spoke daily. Perhaps driving sports cars created intimacy. In five minutes of riding in the Jaguar, Matthew had learned more about Sung’s life than in six months of near-constant training with him.

“Did Rhee’s treatments help Brooke?”

“Very much.”

“You should know, Matthew, that when Rhee saw her in town, he reacted contrary to his whole life. Speaking to her—inviting her to be his trial student—was momentous for him. Her response filled him with relief. She never questioned his extreme awkwardness or minimal instruction. I know she’s athletic and have recommended her to an excellent Taekwondo teacher in the city. And I gave Fletcher the name of a man who will teach her tactical and defensive driving.”

“Thank you, Sung. She and Fletcher can take helicopters and taxis for now. But in September, she’s going to Vassar and plans to commute between Poughkeepsie and Woodstock.”

“To be with you?”

“After the movie opens, I certainly hope so.” Matthew sighed. “But mostly, she promised Dex.”

“Fletcher finds her remarkable, but you know that.”

Matthew smiled with mixed emotion. How grateful he was to Fletcher, who had taught him critical acting skills. The old drunk’s angry insults were usually funny. Even his cruelty never compromised his eccentric integrity. But his relationship with Brooke riled Matthew—not particularly because of the circumstances that provoked her father to beat her nearly to death. That was a horrible accident. Matthew’s anxiety stemmed from something else.

Fletcher’s ravings of her beauty and brilliance sounded absurd, but Matthew agreed. In fact, he wished she took his praise seriously. It was…Fletcher’s interest in them together—that was creepy. Supposedly, he detested all things heterosexual but when Fletcher screamed at them and recoiled—he protested too much. His vicarious pleasure cheapened them—or no: It belittled Matthew alone, and might possibly, eventually, ruin him in Brooke’s eyes. He couldn’t know.

Sung had been assessing Matthew’s mood, which was obviously confused. “I need to explain some things,” he said. “And ask you questions. There’s an inn a few miles from here if you’re ready for breakfast.”

He sped along Slough Road and stopped at what looked like a pub. Sitting at the bar, Sung ordered steak and eggs. Matthew asked for eggs and toast and Sung said all right for now, but soon, Matthew must eat more.

Not facing each other, but sitting side by side, might be what allowed Sung to reveal himself. When Matthew caught his eye in the mirror behind the bar, Sung fell silent.

They stirred their tea and while Matthew looked down, Sung described how he and Harold had saved the movie’s Hamlet scene. The producer considered it superfluous. “James Bond, the master swordsman? A stupid joke that’s been done.”

But Harold had insisted it was the best possible opening: Bond and Otto overwhelming Hamlet and Laertes in Central Park, on the Delacorte stage. After Sung promised one fluid take, Harold described Fletcher handing Otto two tunics. Bond wears the one wired with explosives, but wields the rapier with such finesse, he evades Otto (a double, Sung said.) Bond nicks Otto’s arm and he flees. Giving chase, Bond throws off the tunic, which erupts in flames sending the audience screaming into the night.

The executive surrendered.

Later Harold had asked how Sung imagined it. “I told him to focus on you. Get your circular moves. Go tight on crossed blades, longer on attacks and counter-attacks.”

Matthew looked farther down. “When will I achieve proficiency, Sung? Let alone finesse?”

“You are proficient, Matthew. Soon you’ll lead with your heart.”

(click here for the next episode)

Bloody Murder

 

Brooke had begged Tara to meet her at Sarabeth’s at six because they “never had time together.” At six-thirty Tara decided to leave but then a waitress appeared with pumpkin waffles and a double latte.

(Click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

She was chewing, mouth stuffed, when Brooke sauntered in, wearing her new clothes, which instantly made Tara’s seem less cool—kind of…contrived. (Oh well.) Brooke’s plaid mini-skirt swished about her long, black-clad thighs and her little red jacket illuminated her already luminous beauty. “Who are you supposed to be, Brooke, the goddess of wet dreams?”

“You too, Tara. Matthew knows how to buy clothes, doesn’t he?”

“His buyer does. And money’s no object.” She wiped her lips.

“Was that how you said thank you?”

“He told me it was his buyer. At least I had the decency to say good-bye. Last night he left so heartbreakingly free and breezy that I cried over not being you—for his sake. Why can’t you deal with your emotional shit and still be there when we’re all saying, ‘Good-bye; good luck! See you at Christmas.’ Moral support that takes two minutes.”

“Tara? If I could, I would.”

“He’s worried to death because ever since he started making ‘Readiness Is All,’  you practically get killed every week.”

Brooke ordered a Greek salad and a pot of Oolong tea. “At the same time, Tara, he has no choice but to stick with this beaten-up, car-wrecking teenager. Because if he brings home a nice, legal girlfriend? Dex will murder her. Viral headline: 007’s nine-year-old son assassinates Bond girl! Franchise nightmare supreme.”

“Brooke, he’s sick in love with you. Connie’s exact words: ‘Obvious.’ ‘Sick in love.’ ‘More than ever.’ So if you want sympathy tell me about Pop.”

Brooke waited, her salad untouched. She covered her face with her hands and then removed her headband. Tara, seeing her ears, winced. “Jesus, Brooke. What set him off?”

Getting no answer, Tara said, “Come on, Connie ignores the whole thing.”

Looking around the mostly empty restaurant, Brooke inhaled hard. “Every Monday at two, I rode my bike to Fletcher’s to go over the play. He made a big deal about the time. A couple of weeks ago, I got there and Pop and Fletcher were in the living room. Pop looked up; I ran into the woods. He found me right away.”

“What were they doing?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Yes, I do,” Tara said.

“Well, Fletcher’s obviously gay, right? So they were seriously into—that.”

“What?”

Brooke sipped her tea. “I saw something I shouldn’t have, Tara. Same as I always do, okay?”

“No—tell me what you saw.”

Brooke sighed, held a hand over her mouth, and stared at her lap.

Tara wasn’t prepared for this. “What the fuck, Brooke?”

“He was on top.”

Tara bit her lip, damned if she would ask what that meant. “Yeah? What does ‘on top’ mean?”

“‘On top’ means he was humping Fletcher who was underneath, bent over a chair.”

Tara squeezed her eyes shut and fat tears popped out. Her shoulders heaved and she was sobbing. “Liar!” She sobbed and sobbed and couldn’t stop. (When, shit, what did should she care anyway?)

Brooke waved her money and dropped it on the table. She pulled Tara up, collected their stuff, and dragged her sister behind a huge sculpture near the restaurant. Holding her, stroking her hair, Brooke said, “I’m sorry. Cry all you want. I never should have told you; I’m really sorry, Tara.”

Fletcher, meanwhile, did his utmost to forget that last binge where Sunday night had turned into Monday afternoon. Jimmy knocked on the door—plastered, of course. But due to the Benefit, Fletcher was down to four drinks an evening. So, no harm in a wee stumble. (No harm at all!)

Brooke was an angel not to blame him, although Bond faulted him bitterly. But because she didn’t, his outrage flared irregularly. Besides, how was Fletcher to know the tortured scumbag was a torturer? To his own marvellous daughter.

Her interpretation of “Pious Lies” would put them both on the map. Yet Fletcher suffered through every minute of rehearsal. Maybe if he could smoke, he wouldn’t race home and swallow a glassful of vodka, which he didn’t count in his recovery. He was sipping his second martini, tiny sips, and watching “A Clockwork Orange.” (No erotica around the child!) His mobile sounded and he would have ignored it except Brooke—he had to assume—had programmed it with “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the exact bit of it that had made him and Dickie cringe, and yet, rich.

“Damn it!” he yelled.

“Is she there?”

“Bond, you can’t possibly have gotten up to speed with the rapier overnight. Sung said he would reward you with permission to ring the landline using his mobile…ah, yes, this isn’t the landline.”

“I’m calling on my own authority, Fletch, in case you thought I hadn’t any.”

“Your angel Brooke is eating dinner somewhere with Tara. She hasn’t died if that’s your worry.”

“You goddam prick.”

Fletcher hung up.

Three in the morning, Matthew’s time. He set down his phone and did push-ups to quell his anger. Then he phoned Fletcher again who was watching Malcolm McDowell’s propped-open eyes. “Bond, you’re interrupting.”

“Then you’ll have to excuse me. Did you get the papers for a restraining order against Brooke’s father? I need you to guide her through the process. Take her to Tinker Street as soon as you return to Woodstock.”

“Come, come, Mr. Bond. Jimmy’s secluded inside a Catholic cult.”

“Not for long. I want Woodstock’s police—who watch over Brooke and Tara whenever Connie’s meditating—to realize her father threatens her life.”

“Has Brooke agreed to this?”

“We haven’t discussed it.”

“Why not?”

“Because you must persuade her; you were a party to it. You have to convince her even though she fondly recalls the roses he used to send her after bashing her skull.”

“And probably still would if he wasn’t destitute.”

“Fletcher, do you want Brooke killed?”

“Bloody pig! I admire her beyond your piddling capacity.”

Matthew listened to him slurp his drink, once, twice, until Fletcher said, “Fine. I’ll coax her into taking legal action. After all, I hold the greater sway.”

Ignoring that, Matthew asked, “Can we arrange a time when you know she’ll be there?”

“Sorry, Bond. I can’t predict. She’s fully booked with classes. And on Saturday nights she’ll be seeking her favorite D.J.s at various clubs.”

“Brooke’s going to nightclubs? Dance halls?”

“Shall I forbid her because she’s too young?”

“Nice one, Fletch.”

“Ring in an hour. She’ll probably be here. If not, I’ll have finished my movie and we can gossip about Sung—it might help your authority.”

(click here for the next episode)

Resolutions

Fletcher crunched on Tic-Tacs in the squad car and smacked his lips. The crash had hurled him straight into sobriety and its cold glare left him defenseless against hysteria.

“Breath mint, Trooper…?” He extended his arm over the seat and rattled the orange pellets in their plastic container.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

The State Trooper didn’t answer.

“Brooke, a Tic-Tac?”

“No, thank you.”

Inside the station, he trembled, reeling anew at being extricated from the smoking wreckage by the Jaws of Life. He marched toward a bald officer seated at a metal desk and yelled, his voice pitched to alarm a crowded theater, “O Captain, my Captain! Our fearful trip is done.”

When the policeman ignored him, Fletcher threw back his head and roared, “My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still.”

Brooke tugged his sleeve, pulling him away from the desk, where (clever, funny girl!) she whispered behind her hand, “No Walt Whitman. They’ll take it the wrong way.”

“You do say!” He bent over laughing. “Is that true, officer? Do you take Walt Whitman’s ode to the slain Abraham Lincoln—the wrong way?”

The officer continued ignoring Fletcher, who then wondered aloud if being an Englishman disqualified him from reciting even two phrases from one of America’s great patriotic gems.

At this, Brooke asked permission to call her mother.

Two hellish hours later, Connie arrived, vouched for Fletcher, and arranged for a car service to drive them into the city.

Brooke and Fletcher arrived at the theater as the cast and crew were debating whether to leave.

“No, no,” Fletcher said. “We apologize for tardiness. It shan’t happen again.” He then introduced his protégé. “What Brooke says goes. I shall speak up should she overlook anything, which is highly unlikely.” He then glowered in the back while Brooke, having done her homework, recognized each actor and congratulated his or her latest performance.

The mother claimed “Pious Lies” was among her favorite plays; she had always wanted this role. Brooke said, “Wonderful,” and listened carefully before suggesting her idea for the dialogue. In her mind, she heard each character speaking in a distinct but natural cadence until the end.

“But after the tragedy—tell me if you don’t like this—the characters all talk in the same stilted style. It’s as if they’re groping backwards for an old-fashioned language—the way people might have talked before anything bad had happened.”

The actors said, “Wonderful,” or “Inspired,” but Fletcher, standing behind the last row of seats, called out, “Obey her, idiots!”

He was dying for a drink and craving nicotine. His phone vibrated and he answered it in the foyer. Bond had arranged for a helicopter to bring them home. “Be at the heliport at six. It’s in your name, Fletcher.”

Desperate for drink and smoke, he mumbled his assent and phoned Rhee about treating his addictions.

“I am honored, Mr. Fletcher. Sung hopes you do this.”

“Yes, he’s talked me into it. My goal is to limit myself to a few drinks and several cigarettes a day. And even that will be daunting.”

“The first truth is your will. I prescribe full acupuncture, 365 needles, three nights, no interruption.”

“May we begin tonight? At nine, no earlier.”

Rhee said, “Yes, nine. I see you Thursday until Saturday.”

Friday morning, as Fletcher was assessing the efficacy of his first acupuncture session, Matthew phoned, demanding Brooke return to Woodstock that evening and Saturday, since on Sunday he left for London.

Fletcher said, “Yes, now leave me alone.” He had already assumed Tara or someone would fund his helicopter account. “Not that I can’t afford it, Bond. But of course you can more than afford it and everything else.”

The next day, while strapped tightly in the whirlybird’s tiny seats, Fletcher asked Brooke if for Sunday’s sojourn she would pack for a week. “That way we can get settled in the brownstone. My friends have already spent three months in Africa; their domicile is bound to be dusty and possibly musty. And during the week, we need to see several new plays. I’ve been out of touch for twenty years—difficult to fathom.”

Brooke hadn't seen any plays except those performed every summer in Woodstock, and a few at her high school, which didn’t count. She also wanted, if Fletcher didn’t mind, to take Taekwondo and join a gym.

“Splendid, my dear. Now tell the truth: Are you anxious? Helicopters are new to me, too.”

“Well, being up in the air is certainly safer than me driving us anywhere, ever again.”

“Indubitably.”

Saturday night, when Fletcher, having finally gotten enough gin and nicotine into his system, arrived at Rhee’s, so did Bond, interrupting one of his runs.

“It’s good-bye now and not tomorrow, because Brooke prefers to wake and find me gone. Seeing me leave makes her cry all day.”

“She cannot weep tomorrow afternoon,” Fletcher said. “She has to work.”

“Her point exactly, Fletch.”

“I thought Tara’s genius was frightening, but Brooke’s is exhausting.”

“You’ll catch up,” Matthew said, “once your metabolism stabilizes.”

“You think that’s it, Bond? My metabolism? As for you—we both know you suffer far worse than she. At the risk of spoiling Sung’s surprise, or no, he said ‘inducement,’ he’s decided, upon consulting me, that you may ring the brownstone once a week, ostensibly to talk to me.”

“If you’re toying with me, Fletcher, I’ll kill you.”

“Nonsense. Ring tomorrow night if you like—our time.”

Rhee clapped his hands—one loud sound. “We begin.”

(click here for the next episode)

Human Nature

Watching the lane from the kitchen, Tara wondered where everyone was. It was after 5p.m. and dark.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

In her bedroom, she had found stacks of shiny white boxes filled with soft new clothes. The tags said “‘Laser Cuts’ introduces a superior microfiber of exceptional drape.” A booklet suggested various ways to layer each item. The dresses, skirts, tunics, vests, and tights were black or gray. The first layers, warm in the cold and wick-away in the heat, were creamy white. Tara put on black tights and a white camisole layered with a black top, a flowing skirt and wrap-around vest. In the mirror, she looked like her real self—a pretty, brainy girl who suffered no fools. Eager for the family to see how stylish and graceful she was, she kept skipping into the atrium, checking her reflection, and hurrying back to the kitchen.

Two hours ago, she had tromped through the atrium, a weary, shapeless girl lugging a suitcase. In the mirror then, she had looked grungy and slightly plump. Now she was a willowy blonde teenager who was smarter than everyone else.

First, she spotted Connie’s headlights. Then Matthew appeared in one fast, fiery motion. He opened Connie’s car door, hugged her, and held her wrists. Both of them nodded and shook their heads, and with a hand on Connie’s shoulder, Matthew led her onto the deck and opened the kitchen’s glass doors.

Aware that they seemed upset, Tara had been waiting to hear how great she looked and to thank Matthew. “Hey!” she said, twirling the way Brooke often did when she was excited.

Matthew smiled. “They’re perfect for you, Tara. I wasn’t sure, but—do you like them?”

She hugged him—her mother had, so why not? “They’re amazing. Where did you find them?”

“I talked to someone whose taste in clothes is like perfect pitch.”

“You must have described me very well, because everything’s…”

“Tara,” Connie interrupted. “I’ve been at the police station in Hawthorne, two hours there and two hours back. Brooke totaled the Mercedes, crashing into an underpass. She and Fletcher were going to the city for their ‘Pious Lies’ rehearsal. Naturally, she was driving too fast and Fletcher was drunk. They’re lucky to be alive. And when the police took them to the station, Fletcher got so obstreperous, they issued him a citation for public drunkenness.” Connie’s chin trembled and she shed her coat.

“If the airbags hadn’t gone off, if Brooke didn’t have what little control she did over the car…But they’re fine and, you and I need to talk, Tara. Meet me in the sewing room.”

“All right. Where is Brooke now?”

“After I arrived and Fletcher sobered up or calmed down or both, he called a car service.”

Matthew stared at his feet. “It was my fault, Tara.” He looked up and his big liquid eyes made her shy. “I should have made them take a helicopter. Brooke barely knows how to drive but I wasn’t thinking…Fletcher’s been drunk and peevish all week and I was sick about being separated from her.”

“Connie won’t take long; wait for me,” Tara said.

“I’m late for teaching Taekwondo to Dex and Rhee.”

“But after dinner?”

“Tara, I can’t talk about it yet.” After saying he was glad, even relieved to see her, he left.

The door to Connie’s sewing room was slightly open. Tara watched her toke on a joint and snuff it out. Still holding  her breath, she said, “Take a seat.”

Tara arranged her new skirt, each fold a different length.

“He bought Brooke clothes, too,” Connie said.

“Like these?”

“No, of course not. They’re like Brooke. Matthew wanted to distract her from pain. She’s better since Rhee treated her, but the bruises on her face show even through stage make-up.”

“What happened? Did Pop show up here?”

“Brooke was at Fletcher’s. Every Monday afternoon they worked on ‘Pious Lies.’ Fletcher loves her ideas and they’re both excited. Still, with Matthew in London…” Connie bit her lip and found a skein of yarn that needed winding.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come home when you asked, Mom. But since Matthew was here, I didn’t think it mattered.”

“Brooke misses you a lot, Tara. And I wanted Jimmy to hear you were worried enough to drop your studies. But for the time being—six weeks—he’s doing an Opus Dei retreat in Albany.”

“Opus Dei—his Latin Mass friends. Pop almost kills Brooke and God forgives him. When he finds out she’s shacking up with Fletcher, he’ll kill her for real. But God will forgive him for that, too.”

Connie dropped the yarn in a basket. “Tara, your father’s a bad man who prays to God to make him better. It sounds   silly to you because you don’t believe in God. But the pattern he’s developed with Brooke can go no farther. And whatever you’re imagining when you say Brooke’s ‘shacking up’ with Fletcher is so off-base, I have to wonder if you know anything about basic sexuality.”

Tara sputtered, ready to walk out—she did not need this.

Connie said, “We’ll get into that another time, Tara, but I’m serious. Fletcher’s had a terrible time since Jeremy Dickinson died. They were an inspiration to me. They still are. My hope is to get your father into some Opus Dei residence—because he’ll go there. And if he wants to belong to that group, they’ll make him quit drinking. Whatever happens, I’ve got to make sure he never sees Brooke again.”

“Mom, want me to help with dinner? Where are Ivy and Chase?”

Connie said, “Oh my! They’re at the Gallery. I’ve got to go get them.”

After dinner, catered mushroom lasagna, salad, and baked pears, which Matthew served and cleared, Tara asked if he wanted to tell her his problems and hear her advice.

“Maybe tomorrow.” His smile showed her he was sad, not condescending.

She asked Dex and Ivy if they wanted her to read to them.

Dex said, “Brooke will be back in time, right Dad?”

Matthew had insisted Fletcher bring Brooke home in a helicopter until Sunday, when he flew to London.

Later Connie would pick up Brooke from Fletcher’s, because Matthew couldn’t—and nobody wanted her out bike-riding until every trace of Pop beating her had healed.

“Of course, somebody has to drive her home,” Tara said. Although she had to wonder if Matthew was being fair.  “Not only do you expect Connie to condone your love affair but she has to chauffeur Brooke to your doorstep.”

“Tara, I love you, I really do. But in the last ten days, Brooke has almost died twice. So these next few nights? She sleeps in my bed.”

(click here for the next episode)

A Fluke or Two

During Tara’s first week on “Every Mother’s Child,” which was more like a bogus reality show than a soap opera, she thought she was dying.

She rang Brooke every night, who told her, “Loneliness is a terrible disease, the worst.”

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

Tara said, “I’m not lonely. I’m homesick.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Nothing.” Nothing Tara wanted to discuss, anyway. She wanted Brooke to ask, remember this? remember that?, until Tara fell asleep.

She didn’t dare tell Brooke how weird it felt being homesick for Matthew’s home. For if she reminded her sister that their home was the A-frame, Brooke would probably move all her stuff back there. Everyone would feel awful. Imagine how Dex would be! And Matthew would know Tara had thwarted him.

Last summer while Brooke and Dex rode their bikes, Matthew and Tara had circled the meadows sometimes, talking about Brooke. Restless, Tara often warned him to make the distinction between “my house” and “your house” explicit.

“Why on earth would I do that? I want your family to be mine.”

“Obviously.”

Tara knew every word he would say next: That ever since Brooke had thrown down her bike by the sunroom door, “all long legs and lively audacity,” he had wanted her (and her family.)

Tara agreed that her sister was full of “lively audacity” Very full of it. But Matthew should know that Brooke was ten times riskier than she was audacious.

End of game. What Tara liked was Matthew asking for advice; Matthew on screen; Matthew telling her about his movies or “Children’s Minds,” which he only did once.

After her first scene playing the amnesiac Sienna, Tara began a campaign to get her character killed. Because idiotic Sienna aside—God, how she missed Brooke! Yet when Tara was there at Matthew’s, Brooke raced nonstop through the mountains on her Yeti. (Did she even know its name meant the Abominable Snowman?) Worse and ridiculous was Brooke refusing to watch Matthew’s movies with Tara, “because on screen, and off, whenever it was made, he’s in love with someone else.”

After two weekends of this, things changed. Tara became happy in the city and didn’t miss Brooke at all. First, a money manager invited her to structure Matthew’s theater donations. And Tara found that advising Matthew about his money (whether he knew it or not) satisfied her much more than advising him about Brooke. After all, what was more intimate than money?

Tara, who had never known anyone rich before, felt a profound and private connection to Matthew when arranging his funds. The theater donations took her less than two days and Arthur, the money manager, wondered if she wanted to do the same thing with Matthew’s various other charities. By the end of that week, her donation structures gave each charity more money (mostly by cutting out unnecessary transactions) with enough left over to start a new charity.

Brooke left her a few voice mails and Tara texted, too busy to talk.

Unfortunately, Arthur the money manager couldn’t employ Tara fulltime, because she was fifteen. (Da law!) Instead, he arranged for a special admission to NYU. Tara emailed Brooke that she was jumping into linear algebra and math analysis mid-semester. No need to say she wouldn’t be “home” on the weekends—especially not after she met Ava and Chloe next door.

Then when her mother left a message saying Pop had beaten Brooke almost to death, so would Tara please come home this weekend? She couldn’t. She had plans.

“Next weekend, Connie. I promise.”

Brooke left voicemails all week but Tara ignored them. Because beaten almost to death or not, Brooke sounded elated and Tara had assignments due.

By coincidence, although who would believe it, she dutifully pulled a suitcase on awkward wheels down Matthew’s lane Thursday afternoon, hours after Brooke had left for the city.

Nobody was home. Or nobody but Matthew wringing his hands in his office tower.

Tara settled into her third floor bedroom while Matthew spun through fear vying with hope.

At eight a.m., Brooke had driven away in the Mercedes, with Fletcher, to his friends’ brownstone on 110th Street. At Brooke’s request, Matthew ran the trails as usual. “Please don’t make me say good-bye; it’s too horrible.” If he would run, she would leave him a love letter. Fletcher had promised to ring the second they arrived in the city.

Before eleven a.m., Matthew sat at his desk. Of course, he shouldn’t expect to hear from them until noon.

At twelve-thirty, he attempted a distraction: she was sleeping in his arms; he studied her face and listened to her breathe. Careful not to hurt her head, he arranged her hair so the dark, majestic sheen of it swept across his bare chest…Love and reverence should flood his synapses—but no; one-fifteen and the phone hadn’t rung.

He stood and tried a different technique: “Here’s your mark, Mr. Bond.” A roundhouse kick, back spinning kick, and another roundhouse kick in mid-air. Do it and the phone will ring. He did it twice and twice again and the phone didn’t ring. He practiced fast series: blocks, kicks, and hand attacks until two p.m.

Throughout every second, part of his consciousness pored over Brooke’s letter. She recalled their lovemaking as “touching and not touching; whispering and not whispering; and then laughing unrestrained into that rapturous silence that exists inside your soundproof tower and nowhere else.”

Another paragraph conjured up their midnight adventures, crawling like spiders across jutting rock. “Remember that time your hands caught the tips of my fingers, saving me from a bottomless pit?” It had taken him twenty minutes of gentle maneuvering to get a solid grip and lift her to safety.

Two-fifteen—the phone; the fucking phone.

For twenty minutes, he breathed Qi Gong, furiously aware of the phone not ringing. Her letter lying on the couch contained days and nights when their combined sensations wound around them like ribbons.

He longed for that letter, but stood still. If he abstained from her long, looping handwriting—the phone would ring!

He never should have let her drive. Why hadn’t he thought to call a helicopter? Distress, panic, violent trembling.

And—Christ have mercy—finally, the phone sounded!

“Hello, hello!”

No connection.

He hung up but snatched it again and Fletcher’s voice faded.

“I can’t hear you!”

“I’m….”

“She! How is she?”

Their connection broke and then the phone rang again.

“So sorry, Bond. My mobile’s…well, is this better?”

“Put her on, Fletch!”

“Hello, Mr. King? We’re fine. The Mercedes, I’m sorry to report, is gone. A flukey accident.”

“Brooke! Please, be Brooke—my Brooke.”

“I love you, Matthew. I’m sorry I wrecked your car. On the Saw Mill Parkway a fat raccoon froze in the middle of the road. I swerved and crashed into a stone wall. But we’re fine. They made us wait at the police station but no hospital because the Mercedes saved us. In a smaller car, they said, we would be dead.”

(click here for the next episode)

Long Before You

Brooke parked the Mercedes in the muddy grass and turned to Matthew in the back seat, “Am I half-dead? Because everything’s whispering just out of range.”

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

He inched forward, unable to stroke her head, which was still riddled with sores or to touch her blackened ears. “You’re not half-dead, Brooke.”

He ran his fingertips beneath the ivory collar curving along her clavicle. “But I need to talk to Fletcher—now.”

“About when we start ‘Pious Lies?’”

“Among other things. Your first rehearsal is Thursday afternoon.”

“This Thursday.”

He unbuttoned the teal dress and slipped it down to her elbows. Crouching from the back seat, he bent over and kissed her throat.

“Matthew.”

He lifted his head. “You’re gonna be great, Brooke. And if Fletcher’s mean to you, tell Tara to tell my money manager.”

Tara! Brooke couldn’t tell her anything. They used to be so close but now she wouldn’t answer the phone.

“So Fletcher and I leave Thursday morning,” Brooke said, “but you’re here until Sunday.”

“Yes, but Thursday is four days away. What about our adventures? Aren’t you going to save me by dragging my body over thin ice? Weren’t we going to hide in mossy crevasses?” He stroked her arms, and for a minute, his fingertips stayed at her ribcage.

“I hope so.” Brooke hit the gas pedal because the car was sinking into the mud. The Mercedes flew up, bucking onto the lane.

 “Don’t drive any—” his breath caught.“—other car than this one, Brooke.” He laid his head near her heart before looking at her. “Whoever gave you a driver’s license was watching you and not your driving.”

She played with his hair and her lips brushed close to his ear. “I slam the gas too often.”

Her breasts, covered in translucent blue, filled his hands. “Never slam—”

She arched forward as his mouth moved over her bra. “Never slam what?”

He halted, reluctantly sliding his fingers from her waistband. “Never slam on the gas, Brooke.”

His lust almost crippled him as he pulled away but he had to talk to Fletcher—now—enough binge drinking. After dropping into the backseat, he asked for her hand and sucked each finger before letting go. He waited long enough to make his voice sound light. “When Christmas comes, it’ll feel like I never left.”

She twisted around, her face bright, beguiling—and indignant. “How can you say that? As if you never left! I’m nothing like the Brooke you loved in the summer. And six weeks from now, I’ll be nothing like I am this evening.”

“Untrue,” he crouched forward again. “The more you change—or—the more you stay the same, the more I’ll always love you. We agreed—you wouldn’t doubt me.”

She pushed his forehead away, sending him back. Blazing with anger but not just anger, a sorrow or loss older than both of them, she stared at him. “Matthew, you think your love is better than mine.”

“I’m not better at anything than you. We both know that.”

She seemed surprised and then amused. “You’re a much better James Bond.”

“Well, being a man helps when it comes to James Bond, but I’m sure you could…” He moved to kiss her mouth—after waiting forever—but she had opened his door and was pushing him out. He rapped on the window. “I won’t be gone long.”

The window whooshed open. “Yeah? I’m gonna be rolling around in your bed.” She picked up the magazine. “Me and The Sexiest Man Alive.”

With that, she peeled out, the car lurching. He jogged backwards, watching, but at 212, he sprinted, kicking hard up the incline in boots, jeans, and a heavy sweater. In the night air, he became blind to everything except her brutalized scalp, her blackened ears, and yet—how she would thrive! He wanted to share her triumph day after day as she directed “Pious Lies.” Sensitive, unstinting Brooke probably wouldn’t encounter envy, not yet anyway. Because at seventeen? She very well might have emerged fully formed from the ocean foam.

But soon, when Matthew was chasing Otto among ancient tombs, who would witness her achievements? And who would protect her? Fletcher flung open the door, his bow tie a pink paisley.

“Bond, if you’re here to show truculence at your Sexist Man Alive feature, go home. I won’t apologize for becoming aroused. That’s why it exists.”

“Fletch, you’ve got to stop drinking so much.”

“Is that your mission, then? You’re just in time. My next pledge begins…” he looked at a non-existent watch, “…this minute.” He fixed them Perrier, cloudy with bitters, and each with his glass sank into a living room chair.

Matthew said, “For months, Tara and my money manager have issued donations to the city’s theaters and drama associations along with a promissory schedule. So it would make sense, Fletcher, even if it pains you, to indicate that you and I are very close friends.”

“You hurt me, Bond. For I believe that we are indeed the closest and dearest of friends.”

“Only if you’re nice to Brooke. Don’t yell at her and don’t lock her up, forcing her to keep you company.”

“I beg your pardon! Are not you the one who locks her in a tower, demanding she take care of your off-spring?”

Matthew sighed. “It must look like that. But she says she loved them long before me.”

“Indubitably. In the same vein, I have loved her and her alone of her sex long before you did, Bond.”

“That’s absurd. You make her cry.”

“No, you make her cry! Whereas, I’m her knight in shining armor.”

Matthew stood up, ready to menace the old man. “You’d be wise not to bring that up. I’m sending you legal papers for a restraining order against the man you had in your house who beat her almost to death.”

“No need to intimidate me, Bond. Naturally, I’ll act on Brooke’s behalf, especially since Sung has told me you cannot.”

“What else has Sung told you?”

“Please, sit down. After all, we’re the dearest of friends. Send me the restraining order. The next time Sung and I speak, I’ll ask if perhaps you and Natasha can write to each other a tad more frequently.” 

(click here for the next episode)

The Luxury of Poetry

In the mornings, Rhee taught them Qi Gong. Then Brooke submitted to a dozen needles inserted into her hands for five minutes. A profound luxury: Rhee’s cure revealed visions ten times realer than real life. She and Matthew spent their afternoons together in bed.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

He read Rilke to her. He had heard for years that Rilke was a great poet, but when Harold the director said poetry was his refuge and gave Matthew a translation, he saved it to share with Brooke.

“Do you know about Orpheus?”

“’Course, I do. I’m smart like that.”

But she hadn’t known the “Sonnets to Orpheus” spoke of consecrated trees, transcendence, spiritual meadows, and girls with sacred smiles! He read to her until she climbed into his lap and led him into such rushing fulfillment that for once he screamed her name. And when they rested, Matthew’s waking dreams were just like hers, all limpid perception.

The need for secrecy, or as Sung kept saying “being scrupulous,” meant they couldn’t be seen together. So every night, they wore the headlamps into the forest. In the cold November darkness, they lay inside the ancient sweat lodge, heard their reverberating litanies at Echo Lake, and inhabited the ruins of the Overlook Hotel. Inside his tower, he asked her if she liked her new wardrobe, was it her style?

“It is now. I’ve never seen such finery, Matthew. How can I thank you?”

Silently, they proposed the same thing. And later she tried on the little teal-green dress, fitted at the waist; its ivory cuffs and collar alluring and girlish. Her huge eyes momentarily matched but then surpassed the rare, rich teal color. When she brought her face close, he almost seized her head, a habitually thrilling overture that would harm her now. Before the kids’ bedtime, Brooke read to them, while Matthew draped his arms around each child. Until Sung called, seriously concerned for Brooke and how she was healing. He reminded Matthew to be “over-scrupulous” regarding her. He was glad Connie and Chase liked Qi Gong.

“Tell me, Matthew, does Fletcher like it? Qi Gong would benefit him, as would acupuncture.” 

“Fletcher doesn’t wake up in time for Qi Gong. Ever since Jimmy Logan, he’s drinking too much.”

The morning that Brooke had driven the Mercedes to pick up Fletcher for her second healing treatment, he hadn’t answered the doorbell or his phone. She was wondering if Connie could take his place—precaution, Sung, many reasons—and forgot to shift into reverse. The two-ton Mercedes sped forward and punched a hole in Fletcher’s garage before crumpling the Aston’s rear end. And still he didn’t wake up! Not until dinner did he phone in a fury. Brooke offered to pay for repairs but both Fletcher and Matthew had insurance.

“What’s going to happen next week, child? You need to drive us into the city for rehearsals.” Fletcher had lost his license last summer when he crashed into that combine.

She should practice. In fact, why not drive Matthew and him on the highway every evening? “If it’s dark and I ride passenger, Bond in back, you can develop confidence, my dear, without detection.”

“Right-o.”

Their first night on the highway, Fletcher wore an amusing flat Kangol cap, his Persol sunglasses, and smoked while  he drank gin from a leather-encased flask. The old lush was annoying Matthew more all the time. After Brooke broke his garage door, he never criticized her, but spewed fulsome praise. Naturally, as intended, his flattery jabbed Matthew, not Brooke.

“Bond, you’ve no conception of her creative genius.” Fletcher said Brooke had worked miracles on “Pious Lies,” writing a list of gestures as counterpoint to the leaden dialogue, and scoffing at the traditional presentation of the father’s infidelity as a shocking betrayal.

Attempting to imitate her, Fletcher offered a sassy drawl. “Nobody’s shocked anymore. The son has anticipated this all his life.”

At the next exit, Matthew suggested she stop for gas.

Speeding into the station and braking with a jolt, Brooke turned off the ignition and hopped out without her coat. “Where did she get that cunning little dress?” Fletcher asked. “Woodstock’s charming jeune fille. The actors will adore her, Bond.”

Mathew fumed while Fletcher raved on—more peculiar with every sip from that peculiar flask. He hadn’t felt at all troubled by Brooke spending half her time with Fletcher—until now. After filling the tank, she dashed inside the store and came skipping out, displaying People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” issue. Matthew groaned. Beaming, Fletcher found his longest cigarette holder—Dunhill cigarettes, Dunhill lighter—followed by a long drink from his flask. When Brooke fastened her seat belt, he plucked the magazine from her lap. “How utterly thrilling!”

“Brooke,” Matthew said, “Why didn’t you wait and read that at some dentist’s office?”

“Are you kidding? It’s all I’ve got till Christmas.”

Fletcher whistled but not well. “Best cover in history, Bond. Your smoldering longing makes their usual big, bland faces DOA.”

Brooke raced into traffic, driving faster and faster as Fletcher maddened her because—she could feel it—he was enraging Matthew.

“Here’s a marvelous black and white of you, Bond, naked from the flank up.”

“Let me see.”

Brooke turned and Matthew reached and squeezed her shoulder, meaning watch the road.

“Ah-ha, how sweet: the high-school basketball star! Such a toothsome lad.” Fletcher sipped, puffed, and sighed. “Not that you’ve changed. Except possibly for a handsomer hardness, the kind boys haven’t achieved. Now this is interesting: What’s Matthew reading now? The multi-volume memoirs by the poet Arnold Schnabel. Very classy, Bond. And original! Typically when these lazy louts go high-brow it’s Rumi or Rilke.”

“Fletcher,” Brooke said. “Just shut up!”

“Allow me a soupçon more. The interviewer lauds your healthy life-style, Bond: no alcohol, no recreational drugs, no binges of any kind. Makes you sound rather dull, and yet, well done. Very well indeed.”

“Fletcher, enough!” Brooke looked at him and the car swerved.

“Resume character, angelic child, because: Every actress who knows him admits to falling in love with him. Quoted is the French actress Élodie Marceau: ‘Matthew’s very handsome, very fun, very witty. I was shy around him until he gives me such very great luxury. Very lovely, very great luxury.’”

Finally, Brooke stopped the Mercedes before Fletcher’s impossible driveway.

Matthew said, “Get out!”

“Give it, Fletcher. It’s mine.”

“Please, Brooke, tell me you don’t really want it.”

“Matthew, you don’t know how bad I feel without you.”

“Now, now, darlings, go home and work out your insignificant differences. After all, this was indeed a very great, very lovely luxury. Ciao till tomorrow.” 

(click here for the next episode)

Children Know

Every time Dex asked, Connie said, “Brooke’s probably visiting friends—like Tara.”

But he didn’t believe her for a second. She was worried, too. She dropped her voice and acted matter-of-fact but her skin turned red and she ran to get tissues because her “allergies” were acting up.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

If she weren’t so upset, he might have told her that Tara’s friends were math students in college and another from her TV show. Brooke’s only friend was Fletcher, an old play director who people said was insane. That was one thing. The other was that unless Brooke was bound and gagged, she would know his dad was home. Dex didn’t know how she’d know, just that she would. Brooke missed his dad so much she cried herself to sleep. One night he had to ask her something way past lights-out and sneaked upstairs. Brooke was sobbing so much she didn’t even notice him. And again: Dex couldn’t explain how he knew why Brooke was crying, he just did.

Tonight as Connie was saying, “Goodnight, my little sweeties,” his father called upstairs, “Hello, hello.”

Dex sprang up, dashed downstairs, and dragged him into the TV room, closing the doors on Connie and Ivy. “I’ve gotta talk to you, Dad.”

He said, “One minute,” but looked at Dex to make sure—was it all right?

Yeah, so he waited while Dad kissed Ivy and told her a joke. Connie took her upstairs, and Dad joined him in the TV room, doors closed.

“Something bad has happened to Brooke.”

“Like what? Connie says she’s fine.” Matthew was buying time—no way he’d distract his son. Even though Dex snorted in derision, Matthew said, “Brooke’s sure to be back before I leave for London. Sung called and the designers there have to rebuild a movie set. Everybody in St. Bart’s thought, ‘Great, Matthew can join us for the second week on the beach.’ But Sung said no. I need to stay here and practice Qi Gong with Rhee. And he asked about you, Dex. He wondered if you and Rhee would let me teach you Taekwondo. He’s thinks I’m ready to learn by teaching.”

“Dad! Don’t you remember Brooke?”

Matthew’s stomach dropped. “Please, don’t say that, Dex. It hurts my feelings and if she heard you, it would hurt hers.”

“Then don’t talk about St. Bart’s and Taekwondo.”

“All right. I was stalling, sorry.”

“I’m really scared, Dad.”

He sighed. “I know; me too. Let me think.”

When he had played Dr. Monroe on “Children’s Minds,” the child’s nightmares (and sometimes clairvoyance) developed in reaction to a parent, who was denying a painful past or a humiliating present. Whatever the adults refused to see about themselves, became a torment to the child. Yet the parents continued to say: “Stop asking questions.” “I can’t tell you now.” Or: “You’re too young to understand.”

Dex wasn’t too young to understand. In fact, he had been through his own torment of selfish and thoughtless parents.

Angry, impatient, but mostly frightened, he was rolling on the floor. Matthew sat on the rug and pulled him close. “Dex, what do you think happened?” (Matthew couldn’t say anything without Connie and Brooke’s permission.)

“I think she was kidnapped. Because she’d never leave without telling me.”

“Dex, Brooke’s strong and smart and wouldn’t be easy to kidnap.”

“I didn’t say easy.”

“Give me an hour and I'll find out.” Dex stood up with Matthew. He hugged his father and said, “Let me come with you.”

“Dex, you can’t. I need to talk to people, one on one.”

“It’s something terrible—that’s why you won’t let me come.”

“You can stay awake until I get back.” Matthew put on his jacket and Dex turned on a cartoon about a silly family with an evil baby.

In the kitchen, Matthew caught Connie’s eye—a few words?

“If it’s all right with Brooke,” she said, “I’d be grateful, because I sure don’t want to tell him. And he’s not gonna stop asking until he gets the truth. Otherwise, he’ll be afraid it could happen again.”

“I’m afraid it could happen again,” Matthew said.

“Fletcher’s helping me with that. If you try to get involved, it’ll be worse for everyone.”

“So Sung tells me.”

“How does he know?”

“Fletcher.”

“And did Rhee’s medicine really work wonders for Brooke?”

“Asian medicine’s an ancient practice, and although Rhee’s definitely a master, I prefer the modern kind. Yet, at first, she seemed almost too well. She bought headlamps online so she can show me the woods and she ate a real dinner.”

Inside the tower, he watched Brooke sleep from the threshold; from the end of the bed; and then he knelt over her. He ran his fingers along the blanket, along her prone body until she turned over and smiled at him.

“Are you awake?”

“I’m dreaming of you but,” she swung her legs over the side and sat up, the quartz pendant heavy and bright between her breasts. “I’m thirsty.”

He brought her a glass of cold water and explained how anxious Dex was. “My father was gone by the time I was his age. But asking the man a question was asking for a beating.”

“And after you talk to Dex, I won’t have to explain anything to him?”

“I’ll tell him that since he knows, it’s rude to mention it.”

“Tomorrow I’ll wear one of my beautiful new dresses. He’ll see me in the black one with red piping and I can say I was shopping.”

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed her neck. “He’ll wanna know why you didn’t say good-bye. Why didn’t you call?”

Before leaving the set, Matthew had had several long phone conversations with his clothes’ buyer about a city wardrobe for Brooke. A few things had arrived today with a lot more on the way. Brooke, he could describe centimeter by centimeter. He bought a less exacting wardrobe for Tara, because—why not. He’d missed her too.

Matthew never knew what had happened to his own father. His mother had said only that he was gone for good. Until now, if his father had tried to contact him, Matthew knew every measure he’d take, every word he’d say, and to whom. Entering the farmhouse to tell Dex about Brooke’s father, he had grown past any consideration of his own.

(click here for the next episode) 

The Transcendentalists

If Brooke had known the plan when Matthew scooped her up, sound asleep, she would have said, “No, thank you. No acupuncture.” It never worked. But when she woke up, they were already in the car.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

She was nothing but a poor beaten-up girl who horrified him—not because her back looked like puke, which it did. She horrified him because his love for her absorbed her pain as his own. Could she, would she do the same for him? 

Today he had cursed her name. His anger shot straight through her. Why was that? He certainly wasn’t like Pop, who used her as a punching bag. Matthew’s anger had been so personal it was almost intimate, which was exactly where it went the minute they calmed down.

Now in the examination room, Fletcher, Matthew, her—and Rhee—prepared for acupuncture. Ready, set, and the insertion of 365 needles began. Brooke closed her eyes. 

Whenever she opened her eyes during this long procedure, there sat Matthew and Fletcher as solemn as if in church. She was on the altar and Rhee was the priest. If only a bell would ring… (All kneel.) What bad chaperones they were, witnessing a transformation unlike any acupuncture Brooke had ever heard of. Channels opened; energy flowed. Yet her witnesses stayed stiff and mute.

No longer a religious sacrifice, she saw the room from above. She saw Rhee adjust the needles in her feet and heard herself whimper. Yet transcended, she saw everything as a projection—as if they were dolls in a dollhouse.

Matthew jumped up at her muffled complaint and Fletcher (what a pair they were) yanked him back into the chair. “No gambling, Bond. Don’t interfere.”

When Matthew made love to Brooke—introducing one astonishment after another—what happened to her happened to him too. Even if she was screaming, she checked, like: Matthew, are you with me? And he was; she was positive.

It took him longer, of course—plain biology. Yet he still felt everything she felt...through her.

He lifted her past pleasure, past all sensation into tranquil Joy. And then into perfect Unity, where it didn’t matter if he was with her: She was the same as him.

The eerie similarity between Matthew’s lovemaking and Rhee’s acupuncture wasn’t related to passion. Brooke wasn’t rising toward Perfection—just circling around it, which frightened her.

Especially because Matthew sat there watching instead of holding her and sliding her back and forth between the ultimate thrill and the Ultimate itself. He wouldn’t rush in to join her at any second. And they wouldn’t reflect each other in the clear atmosphere of their own heightened awareness.

Although thinking about it in words was idiotic, what transpired between Matthew and her was the opposite of everything mawkish or amorphous. And considering what they discovered within each other, again and again—he should get angry at her for not trusting him.

Other people’s nonsense—which so maddened Brooke—had control over them except when they were making love. So if he wouldn’t make love to her—if he listened to Fletcher—grotesque waves of distortion would drag her down.

But goddam her if she gave in to them.

After all, afterwards, they lay together in a drowsy celebration. He got them something to eat and drink and sometimes he sang to her. And now and then, when they had all the time in the world, they visited another Ideal together.

How could sex like that be slutty? If it bathed you in mystical light, why would anyone disparage it? Unless some people really didn’t know, and just lived and died with nothing except their lonely need; like hers with that senior from Boiceville.

Brooke laughed. Only ten more needles—lust was a drive, take it where you will. The final ten were going in near her ears. But Matthew stood up and held her hair and everything disappeared.

Then Rhee was saying, “Fifteen minutes no moving. I take away the needles. And Fletcher and I work on his car.” He pointed out the window at the old Aston Martin. “Best you stay.” he said to Matthew; Rhee probably was unsure how to address him. “Some people are afraid. Others wild and happy. Do not worry if she laugh and cry. If she cannot stay still, ask her to drink water, a full glass. Very important she becomes slow. And you can go home.”

He left the room and Fletcher told Matthew, who knew plenty about acupuncture and its variations, that intuitive treatment by a master had helped Dickie beyond measure. “Beyond gin.”

“Thing is, Fletcher, I can’t go to London until she has an MRI and a full round of blood tests.”

“You’re upset. I’m too distressed to eat. Listen to me; Rhee’s treatments will speed her recovery. She’ll heal fast. Physically and mentally.”

“Yoo-hoo,” Brooke waved her hand covered with needles. “I can hear you and your ‘mentally,’ Sir Fletcher.”

Or maybe not. She faded in and out.

Fletcher was talking about Chun who had lived with the Thurmonds in the early nineties. One afternoon, Fletcher and Dickie were driving home and the Aston broke down.

“I’ve noticed it does that.”

“Remind me to teach you comedy, Bond.”

“Moving on,” he said. “Chun raced up in his blue Mustang convertible, stopped by the roadside, and leapt from his open car. He fixed the Aston in ten minutes.”

Once the disease hit, and Dickie’s symptoms became unmanageable, Chun’s acupuncture and herbal treatments relieved him. Chun cured one illness after another for Dickie whereas hospitals only sickened him. After seeing Chun, who often spent entire days administering remedies, Dickie could breathe. He could eat and sleep. Of course until the end. But even then Chun had assuaged a great deal of their pain and fear. At the end, he treated both of them.

Brooked rolled onto her back once the needles were out. “Look at me; I’m as good as new!” Then she stretched and said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” before sliding out of the hideous pajamas—which made Rhee and Fletcher vanish.

Matthew gently stroked her back. “The swelling’s gone, Brooke, and your color’s better.”

She laughed and sank onto the floor. Matthew sat opposite her holding the black satin gown. “Are you ready for this?”

“I love you for bringing me here wearing nothing but my beautiful new nightgown. Fletcher can act offended but instead of feeling like a mass of suppurating wounds, I felt magical.” They rose to their feet and he slipped it over her head. She spun and around the room. “A ballerina, a shooting star, a glorious unknown!”

“Brooke, Rhee says I need to slow you down.”

She reached up and touched his ear. “Do you remember how?”

(click here for the next episode)

Qi Gong

Brooke fell deeply asleep while Matthew talked to Sung in St. Bart’s. Earlier, she had tested her wits by reciting lines from “Pious Lies” until she and Matthew couldn’t stop laughing.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

Yet he never should have left her to visit his children’s schools.

Now Fletcher was yelling through the earpiece and Matthew snapped, “What?” And still, Brooke didn’t stir.

“Bond, I’ve been phoning all day. Bring her to Rhee’s office immediately.”

“I’m taking her to the hospital, which I should have done first thing.”

“She won’t go. Bring her to Rhee’s office.”

“For what? Acupuncture?”

“Obey me!”

After throwing a coat over her satin nightgown, Matthew carried her asleep in his arms, her bare feet bobbing in the cold afternoon. Only when he opened the passenger door did she open her eyes. (And for two seconds or months or always, he sank into them, appalled that he had yelled at her because she doubted him.)

“Brooke, how do you feel?”

“My head’s bad.”

“I should have raced you to the hospital.”

“No! Fletcher says that Rhee’s a gifted physician and can tell just from taking my pulse if I have internal problems. He understands about families’ saving face and Fletcher has explained you’re head of household.”

“And that’s enough?”

“Yep.”

Without shoes, Brooke had to let him carry her up the carriage house stairs, but she might have anyway—smiling and touching him. “Sung wants Rhee to get an American M.D. So he took him from the Korean monastery where he lived his whole life, studying Asian medicine with an esteemed doctor. My Taekwondo lessons are more about Rhee adjusting to life on the outside than about me learning Taekwondo.”

She slipped away from him and hopped, the porch freezing her bare feet. “For my lessons, he stands inside a glass partition with a microphone. Because—get this—I’m the first girl Rhee’s ever seen.”

(Shit.) “That’s good.”

Brooke slapped his shoulder. “Good? Aren’t you jealous? Did you see the flowers? ”

“Brooke, I’m jealous beyond belief. And determined to spare you from it.”

She stood on his shoes, her hands on his shoulders, and watched shadows cross his face. “Will you kiss me?”

After that, she asked why didn’t they go home and make love. “That’s the best medicine.”

He was so tempted he unbuttoned her coat and, holding her bottom, pressed her against him until—anymore and he wouldn’t stop. So he lifted her gently and held her crosswise, his arms under her shoulders and knees.

When she fondled his ear the way he did hers, he gasped.

Brooke grinned. “All this time, you thought it was innocent, didn’t you? When you touched the most sensitive area that’s not kept under wraps.”

Leaning backward, he swore he never touched anyone’s ear but hers.

Fletcher opened the door. “Cold and dark at death’s door, Bond! Your lechery never wanes.”

Matthew loved carrying Brooke and Fletcher could squawk all he wanted. Inside a clean, bright room, he settled her prone on an examining table. She rose onto her elbows.

“Brooke, dear, you look chilled. Can I get you tea?”

Nodding, she swung around and her coat fell open. Fletcher yanked Matthew behind a lacquered screen.

“What the hell is she not-wearing, Bond?”

“A nightgown.”

“That’s not a nightgown.”

“Regular clothes would chafe.”

“Chafe? Go chafe yourself then.” Fletcher slammed the door and returned with pajamas, staring at Matthew as if bringing Brooke here in lingerie equaled locking her inside S&M gear.

“May I help you change, angelic child?”

“No thank you, Sir Fletcher. Would you mind waiting behind the screen?”

“Delighted.”

Matthew slipped off the gown and said, “Brooke, let me see.”

The bruises along her spine were puffy. The ones covering her kidneys were swollen but hard, and every abrasion wet.

Then Fletcher looked—aghast. “I’ll lock Jimmy up with the priests.”

“That’s not enough.”  While Matthew helped Brooke dress, Fletcher left and returned with a full tray of rooibos tea.

“It’s delicious with milk and sugar.”

A soft, young man entered, and without looking at Brooke, took her pulse. “No serious internal damage. Very serious healing.”

Matthew stared at the floor. To him, the monastery’s extreme alienation of male and female seemed designed to backfire.

And although he hadn't spoken, Rhee said, “Priests know that.” He split a wax egg protecting a large brown capsule. After handing it to Matthew to hand to Brooke with water, “Drink it all, please.” Rhee said, “The holiest monk collects plants for medicine and sees a woman lift her skirt to cross a stream. He sees her lower leg and that’s it. He gives up everything to live with women.”

Lighting a match, Rhee melted the corner of a metallic envelope. Inside was a tube of anti-microbial salve. “Head of household, please—direct application.”

“Does it sting?”

“No. Unless thirty-six hours after injury, this medicine can harm the system.”

Fletcher carried in bamboo chairs for him and Matthew. They watched Rhee push 365 needles into Brooke.

“The ones in the arches of my feet hurt.”

Rhee nodded and adjusted those needles, increasing the pain. She closed her eyes.

“Sorry but necessary.” He looked at Matthew and Fletcher. “Tomorrow is pain-free and we practice Qi Gong.”

Matthew asked about his training.

“She needs Qi Gong with you. I can tell Sung what he knows—purified energy improves skills.”

Before they left, he took Matthew aside. “Qi Gong relieves her depression when you’re gone.”

(click here for the nest episode)

Snakes and Ladders

Either Matthew caught her thoughts while caressing her knee or Brooke had actually uttered her snake-nest of fears—to him.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

She sat on the bed in half-lotus, using the laptop Matthew had left wrapped next to another present on a chest in his bathroom suite. The smaller box contained two long, clingy nightgowns that weren’t meant for sleeping. One was a shimmery black and the other a creamy color slightly lighter than her skin—so beautiful she planned to save it for Christmas, providing Matthew would be here. For now she slipped on the black one and opened the three-way mirror. Low cut front and back, the sleeveless nightgown fit so that it showed—and highlighted—everything, yet cloaked her in elegance.

When he returned, she planned to glide around, letting him see how it flowed...“Tell me about Ivy’s school and Dex and Mrs. Ambrose…”

And after thanking him, she’d turn in a circle, holding it by the sides. “So what do you think?”

Twice before dawn, he had resisted her. If this didn’t get to him, she had lost Matthew forever. Because now he knew: she was damaged goods.

But Brooke had forgotten how fast and silent he could be, sneaking up on her. Sitting in bed dowloading transcripts using the new laptop, the fabulous nightgown bunched around her hips, she suddenly realized Matthew was lying beside her, caressing her knee. Only half-hearing his question, she rambled about how Connie had reassured Dex that she was okay—just away right now.

Matthew repeated his question and for some reason she spewed out her detestable fears. She would have confessed them to Tara, except that on the phone the sisters couldn’t even allude to “Mr. King.” She missed her sister. Had they really grown up so much they would never live together again? Tara had always wanted out of Woodstock.

And now Matthew wanted her out. That is, he wanted her to go away to college. Without grasping his full intent, other than that he wanted her to—go!—Brooke lost perspective. All her guard, the gleaming patina she tried to maintain as her personality, vanished. And simultaneously, Matthew vanished: One second his hand was moving thrillingly from her knee up her thigh and then in one leap, he stood at the far end of the room, yelling and cursing her.

He roared that everything he did was all for Brooke—his goddam pulse had changed to match hers when he fell in love with her! But until he finished “Readiness Is All,” they had to hide. While he played James Bond, she was locked away. “In this fucking tower; why didn’t I ask for a bungalow?”

Yeah. Why, why, why? Brooke kept that much to herself.

But before they even got that far, when he first started yelling, he had grabbed his shoe and hurled it at the window as if it were home plate. But it bounced off the thermal, laminated, double-panel window-pane (“Nobody can hear you, Brooke, but me”) and thudded onto the stairs.

She was sobbing and then really keening. And yet shaking, she carefully put down the laptop and eased herself off the bed. Weeping, she begged forgiveness. She couldn’t believe how horrible she was. Or even what a stupid bitch. Hiccupping, she stretched her luminous arm as if pointing to the bathroom and dragged her fingernails along the inside of it, drawing blood at what a sick, wretched, and battered urchin she was.

“Stop!” Instantly he was soothing her. He grabbed her hands, pressed them together and kissed her fingertips. “Urchin, Brooke? Why would you think that? You! Who are so extraordinary. Did your father call you that?”

Sniffling, she said, “Fletcher used to call me that.”

Matthew gripped her shoulders. The garment’s shifting fabric hinted at her delicate ribcage and when she had first landed in front of him, he touched the twin points of her pelvis. Now she hugged him hard, hiccupping instead of crying, and said anybody else on earth would have left her.

She stepped back and whispered, “I can’t live without you,” and led him to the bed where they sat side by side. He couldn’t stroke her hair, not only because of her damaged ears, but because her scalp was riddled with tiny holes where her father had ripped out her hair by the roots.

Matthew wrapped his arm around her without touching her bruised spine, which emitted its heavenly magnetic pull.

Why had he screamed at her? Brooke, whom he loved like nobody else and who had been routinely abused by the first man who should have loved her? Matthew had cursed her out, demanding she tell him just what the fuck he needed to do to win her trust.

“Brooke, I can’t believe I screamed at you. And yet, I’ve never loved anyone so much—and never more and more all the time. Always before, at the first discouraging word, I packed up and left without looking back.”

He stroked both her arms and lifted her onto his lap when the phone on the night table rang. He lay back, reaching over his head for it, and almost decided to let the call go…but didn’t. From St. Bart’s, Sung asked why Matthew wasn’t at the martial arts studio, practicing with Rhee.

“My mistake. I’ll make sure we reschedule.” Brooke had repositioned herself on top of him, lifted his shirt, and starting at his collarbone, pressed her full lips and the tip of her tongue against his skin. She kissed him twice, in what was clearly going to be a long, dreamy progression.

“Excuse me a second, Sung.” His voice rasped. He stretched his arm up and set down the phone down on the night table.

“Brooke...” He choked on her name and she lifted her face; her eyes heightening his urgency instead of calming him. He looked away and shifted. After a few seconds, she touched his cheek and he watched her grinning. When he sighed, there was the hint of a whistle, but now at least he could whisper to her: “Brooke, you know I can’t be cool with you. If I were able to get through this phone call at all—a big if—Sung would know.”

She rolled away and he folded his arm so she could lie close to him, her damaged ear suspended in the hollow between his bicep and forearm.

“Thanks for waiting, Sung.”

“With permission, Matthew, Rhee is no better than you at fencing. No challenge even in Taekwondo but you must practice as strictly with him as you do with me.”

“Of course.”

Sung then said that Harold and the producer at St. Bart’s had argued about the "Hamlet" scene. Harold wanted to open the movie with it. The studio producer didn’t want to bother; it was unnecessary. But after Harold described the action in full and Sung offered an oath, he gave his approval.

“To get agreement, Matthew, I said you would perform the scene once, no mistakes. The same as in Brooklyn.”

“Sung, that’s impossible. The Brooklyn Museum was a lucky fluke and my swordplay remains laughable.”

“You’re improving slowly. Engage, please, with Rhee, being mindful he lacks skill. Let the practice teach you.”

(click here for the next episode)

Every Mother's Child

Heading for Ivy’s preschool, Matthew opened the door to find Connie standing there holding red chrysanthemums in a white ceramic bowl.

“From Rhee?”

She nodded. “I don’t know how he knows. Maybe Fletcher told him.”

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

Matthew had expected to feel jealous of Rhee, stupid as that was, since the grotesque emotion swamped him regarding—of all people—Fletcher.

Connie stepped back, the better to see if Rhee’s flowers bothered Matthew. If so, she would dispose of them. Or that’s what he supposed, in his dread that the money he paid her might hold Connie in his sway. Buying privileges he shouldn’t take—that was one anxiety. He also feared a glib superiority slithering into his once unassuming spirit. Perhaps if he remained hypersensitive to any hideous new presumptions. Then he wouldn’t be doomed to the fate of those who got everything they wanted. He hadn’t met that fate yet—he knew that much—but he certainly fit the stereotype of a man so blessed he was bound to be damned.

Issuing Connie inside, he said, “Brooke will love the flowers, don’t you think?”

Past the second floor, he escorted Connie into the bedroom where he slept with her teenage daughter. And where apparently Brooke was sleeping now. Connie set the bowl of flowers on his dresser.

“That’s good,” he said. “She can’t miss them there.”

Backing toward the threshold, he said, “Can you wait? Brooke’s awfully eager to see you.”

“For years she was happier not seeing me. Any eagerness now and even the way she sometimes calls me ‘Mama’ is the opposite of how it appears. It means she’s grown up.”

He stared at his shoes.

“Matthew, Brooke needed to grow up fast. The more adult she is, the safer she is.” Connie sighed and took off her jacket. “I’ve been so guilty with her—and doubly guilty, because not knowing any better, I told her how guilty I felt, which only pushed my trouble onto her.”

“Ah!” One of those small awakenings: “I hadn’t realized that’s how it worked. Because of course, I’ve talked about my guilt, which always makes her angry.”

“You better go.” Connie smiled, glad they’d settled the situation—again. “Ivy’s waiting.”

At the preschool, his four-year-old daughter climbed into his lap and patted his shoulder with a proprietary air. “This is my daddy, everybody. His visit’s a surprise. And my daddy being here makes this my luckiest day.”

Then just as Brooke had predicted, Ivy’s reading of “Green Eggs and Ham” got them both laughing. She also read a book about a crocodile living on the Nile, which was advanced for third graders.

Matthew said, “Ivy, you’re so smart! You must get that from…” He was going to say Brooke and winced.

Saying good-bye, he also said, “I had fun, Ivy.”

“Me too.”

Driving to Dex’s school, Matthew learned that (never mind who Ivy’s real mother was) imagining Brooke in the role even for a second unsettled him. His Brooke was a seventeen-year-old girl whose father beat her up, and had for years. And despite Connie’s opinion, Brooke being grown-up couldn’t protect her. She wouldn’t be safe until her “Pop” was gone for good.

If Matthew were really James Bond, he’d shoot the man’s brains out.

M would say, “Was that necessary, Bond?”

“Yes, in this case, it was.”

At the elementary school, Dex was waiting for him. “Before you talk to Mrs. Ambrose, please, hear my side.”

“Your side?”

He asked his father not to get mad: Dex had told his friends that Brooke was his unofficial stepmother. “And now they don’t joke when she hugs me at soccer games. Before, because she’s so beautiful, they laughed and made noises. I had to come up with something, Dad.” He dropped his head, embarrassed. “I tried to explain it to Mrs. Ambrose but it wasn’t easy.”

“As long as Brooke doesn’t mind, I don’t either. And I’ll tell your teacher that.”

Mrs. Ambrose was a stout, imposing woman, although after two minutes Matthew noticed only her kindness and insight. She appreciated Dex, who excelled at everything but never relaxed. And while ordinarily she insisted children accept their situation as is—no “unofficial” this or that—she realized that Dex and Brooke were the exception. It was up to Matthew if he objected.

(Sung might.) But Matthew didn’t.

And here came his line: “If Dex says the same thing a year from now, I’ll suggest another approach.”

“In another year, Dex won’t be nervous about being the new kid. And Brooke will be in college,” Mrs. Ambrose said. “For now, I’m sure Brooke’s rapport with Dex is as good for her as him. Being wild gave her power. It’s wonderful that now she’s advising your son on how to make friends, thwart bullies, and manipulate fractions.”

“I didn’t realize that. But I’m away so much and will be for a while,” Matthew said. “Did Connie tell you how she came to be his guardian?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Ambrose said. “Connie’s discreet but I connected the dots. She didn’t tell me anything about Brooke, though. And while it’s no longer any of my business, I tried to open the way, short of prying.”

What was this? If Matthew didn’t know Connie accepted him, the teacher’s interest would have him in a sweat. “I can tell you that Brooke finished high school early and will be working on an Off-Broadway play. Tara’s living in the city and has a role on an FX soap opera.”

“Ordinarily, I don’t keep tabs on my previous students,” Mrs. Ambrose said. “But I always admired Brooke, much as I worried about her reckless streak.”

Matthew watched her watching him for acknowledgment. How many times had Tara warned him about gossip? Although he could see the teacher was genuinely protective and questioning. He said, “Brooke’s never reckless with Dex.”

Mrs. Ambrose didn’t doubt that.

Inside his car, damn if Matthew didn’t suffer a little (but still!) twinge of jealousy toward his own son, who, God knows, needed a mother’s love more than any man had ever needed a lover.

Matthew crept upstairs where Brooke was wearing the silk nightgown he liked and was applying to college. “I promised Dex I would go someplace within commuting distance. So I can still read to him most nights.”

“Brooke, is that really what you want?”

“Mama said he was right there when Pop called to confess. So she told Dex I was off with friends. He thinks it’s the same as Tara going to Long Island in case Amber’s father can get her released from that stupid soap opera— 'Every Mother's Child.'”

Matthew lay beside her and looked at her carefully. “Brooke, have you decided you want to go to college as a day student?”

“Tell me this. If I go to Vassar, will you feel trapped? Like I was supposed to be this summer fling and now your kids love me and I love them and how the hell can you ever get outta here?”

“Jesus, Brooke!” He jumped up, stunned and furious. “How dare you ask me that?”

(click here for the next episode)

Rome, Christmas 2007

 

In 2007, not only did Manny find a  job he kept for the past four years--onto greener pastures after his "garden leave"--but his parents took us and our two grown children to Rome for Christmas. Someday I'd love to return.

We had lots of fun. Manny's sister came, too.

Time Will Tell

[The post isn't a favorite; the picture is. This tiny picture of feet gets snatched up all the time. I've added a bigger version, but found it enlarging it caused those "spectral" things I never understood before. Then, too, the colors were blotchy; the best option was probably to tone down the saturation. But I have no idea why anybody likes the picture. I'm reposting this episode, not just the two pictures, in the crazy hope someone might read it just because it's here. This big, long story about a "natural mystic" desperately needs rewriting, which I can hardly wait to do because it's my all-time favorite.]

Angelina and Kaya holed up Asheville. Brian and Hailey were, Trevor said, “inna-inna-cumma-cumma-uyi-caddda.” So Trevor voluntarily managed the administrative rigmarole.

He noticed Polly’s inhuman cry and how she tore away but he no longer worried about her. She was Angelina’s problem.

Lauren Clay, the police chief’s daughter, had captured his attention. She planned to begin UNC in twelve days. Her freshman classes included nothing she wanted to study. And Trevor had gotten her excited about learning how to experiment, how to make art, and see her true self by attending the Consortium.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Although Brian had accepted all the Constortium's fall students weeks ago, Trevor saw eighteen-year old Lauren Clay contributing so much insight and spiritual good will that the community would suffer without it. She was crucial.

A few days ago, after her father, Chief Babble-a-Babylon, paid his sixth visit in two weeks, Angelina had engaged Trevor in a “little chat.” Lauren was five, almost six years younger than Trevor. And it wasn’t ordinary arithmetic: the age difference with someone so young amounted to more than five normal years.

“Compare your life experience with Lauren’s,” Angelina had said. Lauren had never lived in Jamaica. She attended the local high school, played the flute, and starred on B-team volley ball.

“She plays the flute?”

“Trevor—don’t. Lauren is simply too young for you. She’s too young to hang around here with all the ganja. She’s an innocent.”

But with Angelina gone, Trevor discovered Lauren wasn’t innocent. She had smoked weed for years. And, she was sexually adept. Very.

By Friday afternoon, Trevor decided Lauren’s transfer to Black Mountain required immediate attention. He wanted the deal done before the bosses returned.

Uneasy, he asked Lloyd to pick the college’s locked doors for him. Luckily, Lauren didn’t see Lloyd box Trevor to the ground. “Playing criminal, boy? Ya idiot.”

“Righted, Lloyd.”

Meeting Lauren in the parking area, he kissed her, cradling the back of her neck and pressing her against her rusty brown car. “Don’t worry, darlin'. I-and-I fix everything.” He asked for Lauren’s car keys. No man rode shot gun with a woman.

By the time they turned onto the highway, Lauren didn’t dare say anything. Without noticing what she was doing, she gripped the dashboard and pumped a phantom brake pedal. Miraculously, they sped into a parking lot with one car parked at the far end.

Trevor prayed someone would be in Kaya’s building. How could he have been so stupid, asking Lloyd to break into the office? After all, Trevor could talk a person into opening a locked door easier than jimmying it. He entered the hallway calling, “Hi, Hail, I-ney.”

Lauren called out, “Anybody home?”

Melissa Dorgan, an assistant professor in history—medieval history popped in Trevor’s mind; Kaya had introduced them once—stood barefoot in her doorway. “I’m here. If you count me.”

Trevor counted her. He counted on her absolutely, and when she showed him why she was barefoot, a big, new blister on her heel, he sat down and lifted her foot gently. His index finger circled the blister without quite touching it several times as Lauren and Melissa giggled. He tapped lightly on the clear bubble a few times, explaining that he needed to use Kaya’s computer but she had forgotten to give him her keys. “Just some forms everyone has to fill out.”

Without tearing the skin or allowing Melissa or Lauren to notice any fluid seeping out, Trevor flattened the blister. He tapped it, a light rat-a-tat-tat, and both women stared: it looked as if the blister was gone.

“It’s not gone,” Trevor said. “And, it’s bound to hurt if you put those shoes back on.”

Melissa Dorgan found a key that opened a lounge where most teachers kept spare keys. She couldn’t find the light switch, but Trevor could. Kaya’s key hung labeled in a cupboard. Trevor worked computers using trial and error. He knew a few strategies, but enrolling Lauren at Black Mountain proved far from simple.

After an hour, briefcase in hand, barefoot Melissa Dorgan knocked, asking if she could help. “Thanks,” Trevor said. “But we’re almost done.” Deciding to clear his head, he walked Melissa to her car, saying she must soak her foot for at least an hour. He also asked if she was a dancer. “Why? Is my foot all calloused?”

“The opposite,” Trevor said. “I wondered if you danced because your foot looks as if it touches the ground lightly, if at all.”

He chatted with her a while, even though she kept saying she was late for something. Together, they wondered about déjà vu and similar ephemeral impressions. Melissa waved when she finally said good-bye. Trevor returned to Kaya’s office. Lauren was waiting in the hall, having finished with the computer and put the key back. Never fear: she had removed herself from all classes in Asheville and added her name to the Black Mountain roster.

(Click here to read the next episode)

Peter's Secret Place

[This isn't anyone's favorite as far as I know. It's up there among my own favorites, but that's because in our small apartment when I say something to Manny (usually while facing the computer that faces out the window) and he can't  or doesn't or pretends he doesn't hear me, I jump up, asking where he is. "Are you hiding in your secret place again?"]

I knew not to ask, “What’s that, Peter?” when he brought in the first wooden board. We weren’t that casual. Our conversations concerned the world and its needs, global hardship, destruction, and greed. And then, too, history and genius and fundamental, universal truth—nothing personal.

To an astonishing degree, Peter found navel-gazing repellent. “I, me, mine,” he said. “What’s wrong with people?”

When we met, I attempted to argue: People need to talk about their likes and dislikes; it’s how we relate.

But he said, no, it only leads people to demand that everyone believe what they believe. Well, all right; I went along. After all, Peter was the most intelligent, handsome man I’d ever met.

Averse to anyone worming around for validation, Peter naturally disliked revealing his inner life to me or anyone else. Initially, his secretive nature thrilled me—such depth and intrigue.

When we married, we made “non-intervention” our first vow. We would respect each other’s differences just as we respected other cultures’.

Our apartment has one bedroom, a tiny kitchen and tinier bathroom but high ceilings and thick brick walls. Behind the bedroom is a long, narrow, high area, set up as a closet, one half his, one mine.

Once, when he scolded me for examining his toy soldier collection, I said, “No worries, darling, if you need to be furtive.”  It was, I thought, just another guy thing.

But he said, “I’m never furtive, Angela.”

Of course, Peter wasn’t really furtive but should he ever wish for a furtive moment, I understood. I understood, too, not to question his privacy.

The stockpile of wood and carpenter nails accruing in his closet’s shadows meant nothing. I imagined it was like a musty, secret shrine. Or something.

As his project developed, however, I worried. Turned out, it was a boy’s fort, secured to the closet ceiling. I surmised but never saw that he shimmied up a rope and pushed open the fort’s trap door.

Our confines were such that I registered without actually watching him horde bottled water, batteries, flares, flotation devices. He acquired a Boy Scout uniform and soon spent—it seemed—his life inside his fort. His troops traded intelligence in muffled voices.

And then, several times he refused to decamp for dinner. This battalion or that, I gathered, had been bombed to smithereens. Well, please. This isn’t how I’d envisioned married life.

Yet since I was married, I tried to remain loyal. 

Soon he wouldn’t come to bed due to military conflicts. He continued going to work, though. Until the holidays, when insurrections proliferated.

I’ve been staying at my brother’s and avoiding the landlord’s summons. I can’t run forever, obviously. My coworkers won’t cover for me another minute.

To be honest, I’m afraid here, ready with my door key, the hallway thick with silence and desolation.

Ucluelet, Vancouver Island

June, 2010

 

Above is a photograph Manny took and I “enhanced,” a practice to which he objects but really isn’t that different from many time honored processing techniques. This is Ucluelet on Vancouver Island where we spent a week after my cousin Coquille Talbot’s wedding to Severin Knudsen in Port Townsend, Washington--a great place, btw.

Ucluelet is supposed to be great for surfing, providing you wear a wet-suit. We didn’t do either, although I’m fairly certain surfing is beyond me. Even when I was young, I preferred to attempt my few death-defying stunts (and I had a few) on land. Otherwise, it’s a tiny town on the very western edge of the island. The area had various half-built housing developments, I assume arrested by the poor economy.

As happens on many vacations, I suffered a monster, multi-day-and-night migraine. That’s not untypical of migraine sufferers but it’s no fun and means that you’re no fun. Of course, we had our moments. The landscape in Ucluelet at the right time is wild, powerful, and haunting.

Since we never watch TV at home, whenever we go on vacation (it’s one activity I can manage with a migraine), I watch TV like an addict: we saw Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in “Philadelphia Story” and 'round-the-clock forgettable shows on Canada’s Comedy Channel. One comedian, however, mentioned Uclulet as the place old people go when they’re waiting to die. Funny at the time, although bear in mind, I was in terrible pain and had been for a few days and sleepless nights.

Guaranteed Happiness

[Probably around December, 2008, Jan Geronimo of Writing to Exhale stumbled upon this flash fiction, which originally appeared in Mike French's The View from Here. He must have given it a great Stumble Upon review because for two years the hits often ran into the thousands. This year it's dipped into the low hundreds but everything else I've ever written only piques the interest of a handful. As long as you're here, consider joining my Google Friends Connect. Diary of a Heretic has been an active blog since 2007.]

My family called me, “Pris,” which I hated.

It bothered me until I was thirteen and Felicity sauntered into our humdrum classroom, after being expelled from some top echelon school. With several seats vacant, she collapsed into the one beside me, and blew a balloon of bubblegum that somehow didn’t stick to the gleaming swatch of dark hair covering half her face. Behind her books, she exaggerated our teacher’s lisp. “Such suffering succotash.”

I laughed and spent the afternoon in detention. Thereafter we were best friends. Felicity lived in a mansion overlooking Lake Michigan. Her parents traveled and her brother Barret attended boarding school. A housekeeper existed, but barely.

In class, Felicity showed me her body-piercings. When nobody else was looking, she flashed her navel and budding breasts. My parents didn’t miss me. They were happy I’d made such a rich friend.

 At Felicity’s, we watched movies, swam naked in the lake, and, fitting our barefoot soles together, pushed, testing our leg strength. That summer I kissed her in a webbed hammock, getting lost in her perfect, sweet face. Breathless, I asked, what next? Her quicksilver blue eyes darted around. “Lots,” she said, “but you’re not ready.”

Then I fell in love with the backs of her knees as we bicycled along less fancy streets, which nonetheless maintained summer’s endless leafy green canopy. Splotches of sunlight shimmered over the asphalt. Felicity’s instinct for houses where contented owners answered the doorbell rarely missed.

Her game required genteel manners and a waitress’s receipt book pad. If the homeowner would sign the receipt—no money, don’t worry—Felicity promised she would think of the person every day. She’d say their name out loud, guaranteeing their happiness. As witness, I tried unsuccessfully to act solemn.

After we collected signatures covering two booklets, though, the game bored her. Halfway through August, everything bored her. Suddenly, Felicity refused to leave her darkened bedroom—or even talk. I visited and she ignored me.

Except, just before leaving forever, she said, “If you ever think of me, Pris, say my name. And I’ll say yours.”

That was ten years ago. Last week her brother Barret, whom I had never met, found me in Manhattan. He’d pay for the plane ticket if I’d visit the hospital—the same one where John Hinckley is kept.

A nurse led me to an unrecognizable Felicity, huge and twitchy from drugs. Her lustrous hair was hacked into a bowl-shape, her quicksilver eyes blank, and her tantalizing face hung bloated and vacant.

Appalled, I finally took her swollen hand.

Her voice burped like gas from a forgotten cave. “I. Know. You.”

“And Felicity,” I choked, “I know you."

Her laugh was guttural. “I don’t know me. But you…”

“I say your name, Felicity, every day.”

When I returned, my husband teased me for lying to her. As if he could possibly understand. As if anyone could.

Tip and Ozma

[Note: Tip and Ozma is a repeat of one of the first posts on Diary of a Heretic and has always brought in a lot of hits, even when nothing else seemed to. Manny and I read his father's copy of "The Marvelous Land of Oz" when we were very little and hiding in the attic of his family weekend "farm" in Wisconsin. Manny found the idea of a boy turning into a girl--or a girl being enchanted into a boy--startling and frightening.]

The pictures come from L. Frank Baum’s second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz. Written in 1902, the sequel follows the fabulous adventures of an orphan boy, Tip, who was raised by a sorceress. Tip makes friends with the Tin Man, Scarecrow, Glinda the Good Witch, and new characters like Pumpkinhead and the Saw Horse.

When he approaches the gates of Oz, Glinda and his friends realize the sorceress has cast a spell preventing him from entering. Glinda summons the sorceress, who explains she enchanted Tip as a baby. He cannot enter Oz without breaking the spell. The Tin Man is elected to break the news to Tip that he is not really a boy, but a girl--and not just any girl, but the Princess Ozma. The illustrator here is John R. Neill. Copyright did not exist in 1902, but Mr. Neill illustrated all 14 of L. Frank Baum's Oz books. In this illustration, the Tin Man has just given Tip the perplexing news.

Glinda threatens to strip the soceress of her powers if she does not restore Tip to his (her) rightful self. The Princess Ozma will rule Oz once the boy-to-girl transformation takes place. The sorceress gives Tip a potion to drink and sends him into a dreamless sleep.

And soon:

“Tip’s old comrades stared in wonder…and then every head bent in honest admiration of the lovely Princess Ozma.

The girl turned to her old friends. Speaking the words with a sweet diffidence, she said, ‘I hope none of you will care less for me than you did before. I’m just the same Tip, you know, but only—only—’

‘Only you’re different,’ said the Pumpkinhead.”

Manny's Garden Leave

Four years ago my husband Manny (real name Philip but people call him ‘Phil’) was laid off for three months. (A phase the grasshopper in me recalls as free-wheeling and fun—he was home!) But after a season of unemployment, he landed a position with a big company in an imposing building on 56th Street. For four years, he worked twelve hours a day, Monday through Friday and often on Saturday on Saturday. Some of his weekend dedication may have related to me spending every minute fussing over some negligible fiction post, which while I’m writing it feels absurdly urgent. Several weeks ago, he got a new job, which appears more secure. He will work just as hard and just as many hours, but we’re both hoping he enjoys it more.

When he let his employer know he had been hired elsewhere, the HR department found a contract he had signed agreeing to sixty days “garden leave.” When he learned two weeks notice wasn’t enough, he could hardly believe it. “Garden leave?” News to both of us.

Ordinarily, garden leave applies to big wigs. When rich and powerful people move from one corner office to another, their previous employer pays them to stay home for sixty days—and supposedly garden. The idea is to prevent the power-broker from taking clients and company knowledge to his or her next fabulously lucrative employment.

For Manny, of course, “garden leave” meant his previous employer intended to keep him working double-time because of deadlines and short staff due to rampant lay offs. He bargained hard to cut the sixty days to thirty: thirty long days into nights when he would not be clipping the topiary hedges but rather writing untold reports, attending meetings, writing reports about them and rewriting white papers and black books to lawyerly and marketers’ demands.

Today was his last day! Hurray!

He’s free until October 24th, when he starts his new long, hard slog. Between now and then, we’re going to St. John’s, an island in the Caribbean where we went four years ago before he started the job he just left. St. John’s is mostly a Nature Preserve, which means only one hotel sells tourist stuff or caters to toffs.

We’ll stay in ecologically efficient huts. See the roofs in the photo? We can eat communally with the camp or cook stuff on a hot plate. Manny loves to snorkel. St. John’s has great snorkeling (including sharks.) Once I’m in the water I always like snorkeling, sharks or not, much more than I imagined. We might even laze around! We might dance outside to a roadside band.

The camp maintains its own glassworks, using recycled beer bottles. Last time Manny made a great paper weight, while I sweated through a migraine, which I would have endured wherever I was.

During my absense, Diary of a Heretic is schedule to put up a few new photos, new in that I haven’t used them before, and run a few perennial favorites—not my favorites—these are my accidental hits. “Guaranteed Happiness,” the only story, is flash fiction. The other two are pictures of Tip and Ozma from “The Land of Oz” and a picture of a woman’s feet I posted with “Time Will Tell” from my story about Trevor, which is begging to be rewritten.

On October 24th when Manny leaves here at six a.m. for his new job, I’ll most likely resume my struggle to write well enough to tell a make-believe story that intermittently catches someone’s interest for thirty seconds.

All Clear

Searing through the pleasure of feeling her nestled beside him, there came blistering like her bruises and stabs like her cuts and abrasions. None of which diminished the luxury of her breath matching his. Inside the tower, the room grew darker as the stars faded and the moonlight slid away.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

Only when total darkness cloaked Brooke’s sleep did he watch the roving light beneath her unsealed eyelids and not shy from her radiant spirit. Filled with tenderness, he vowed not to weaken or exhaust her again.

During all that swimming while he was gone, which he had hoped would help him through the drowning scenes, he had wished he were running the trails of Overlook Mountain. But when the room brightened to gray, he decided he couldn’t leave her. He’d run tomorrow—and immediately her eyes fluttered open.

“Brooke,” he whispered. “How are you?”

“I ache everywhere, but that just means it was an all-round beating—that’s how Pop does it. He really doesn’t want to kill me. He doesn't even want people to know. Tara’s always researching concussions but I don't think Pop’s done any permanent damage to me. Used to be, he just smacked me or knocked me down a few times. But it’s gotten scary. It’s always more serious than the time before. And he’s never done anything like this to my ears.”

“Last night you said there was buzzing.”

“It’s better; but my ears still hurt. I won’t lie about that.”

“Brooke, don’t lie about any of this. Let me find a doctor.”

“The worst is over. I’m fine and anyone in medicine is gonna report me. Two days in bed; you’ll see. But you know what would really help? If I could lie on top of you.”

She stretched her body over his and he lay as still as possible. He didn’t dare touch her. She pressed her high, round, breasts into his chest and he closed his eyes. She kissed him a long time and he was already moving with her when he forced himself to stop. She reached down, and held him, but he had sworn.

“Brooke,” he rose onto his elbows and her eyes shone directly into his. She pouted until he kissed her. And he kept kissing her, dying to lie back down.

“Matthew, let me ride you.”

“Soon,” he said and scooped her up carefully. After setting her on her feet, he saw the black swath across the back of her hips, like the bruise after her miscarriage, except this time there were two darker marks above the bone on either side of her spine. “Will you drink some water? See if you can pee.”

“I’m fine.”

Her balance was steady and her walk even included the distinctive little spring at her knees. He heard the faucet running, looked around, and then there she was in front of him—her presence as astonishing to him as if he’d never seen her naked splendor before.

“I’m all clear,” she said, “because you made me drink so much water.” She let him lead her back to bed but only after he agreed to go running. “It’s time,” she said. “You always run now.” She promised to rest or sleep and even agreed it would be better if they made love later. He arranged the pillows under her chin and forehead and gave her the phone. “Call me if you can’t sleep.”

Hours later, on marble topping a dresser inside one of the expansive closets, he arranged cereal, a cut-up banana in a covered dish, milk and tea so Brooke could eat breakfast standing up.

“You look so nice.”

"I'm taking Ivy to preschool. That is, she's taking me for 'show-and-tell.'" He sat on the bed and lifted Brooke onto his denim-clad lap.

“Ivy can read anything, Matthew. But get her to read ‘Green Eggs and Ham.’ You’ll both laugh till you cry.”

“That sounds fun.” He lifted a strand of her hair. “Connie’s asking to see you.”

“You didn’t tell her, did you?”

“I would never do that, Brooke—unless you asked.” She slid off his lap and knelt on the floor, stretching her arms out along the mattress. Most of her cuts weren’t raw anymore and she tried sitting up, cross-legged on the bed. “I’ll be okay in a day or two.”

“Fletcher’s postponed the play rehearsals until next week.” He poured a mug of tea from the pot on his dresser and handed it to her.

“Pop used to bring me roses afterwards. Does Connie know what happened at Fletcher’s?”

“I don’t know. Your father told her it was because he heard you had dropped out of high school.”

Brooke smiled. “I always thought Mama was clueless. But she wasn’t the night of the Benefit. And she isn’t with Dex, who’s worried about me being gone half the week when we start rehearsing. Did you know that Connie and Fletcher go back since he first moved here? She was twelve and had worn out two cassette tapes listening to ‘Jesus Christ Superstar.’ She’s the reason the Playhouse committee never fired him.”

“Brooke?” Matthew slid his hand behind her neck. “Does it bother you about your father and Fletcher?”

“Not as much as it must bother Pop.”

“Fletcher says he always denies it. He gets so drunk he can’t remember anything and claims Fletcher makes the whole thing up. It’s been like that for years.”

“That’s my Pop, denial, denial, denial. I betcha Connie’s guessed about their relationship or whatever, but I don’t want to be the one confirming it. Imagine what he’d do to me then!”

“Nothing! He’s never going to hurt you again. But if he ever approaches you, attack him with your roundhouse kick.”

“I don’t know. I can practice thinking he’s the same as any other attacker.”

“He is your one attacker, Brooke. Don’t wait to see what kind of mood he’s in. Get him before he gets you.” Her shoulder tops were uninjured. He pressed his lips against one and held the other in his palm. “Connie wants to see you as soon as I leave.”

“Will you tell her I want to see her, too? But she has to promise not to feel guilty.” 

Matthew took her hand, scarcely believing what he was about to tell her, because he had become insanely jealous of how much time Fletcher would have with her. But she’d be better off while he was away. “You know, Brooke, Fletcher loves you—he’s told me so more than once. Make sure you take dance classes or Taekwondo in the evenings. Otherwise, he’ll watch old movies and get drunk and I don’t know what else. But he really does love you.”

“He’s always loved me. He only called me ‘Abominable’ so people wouldn’t know.”

“He won’t call you that again. Before I take Ivy to school, can I kiss you?” He could kiss her without worrying when his clothes were on.

(click here for the next episode)

Fletcher Regrets

Matthew stared at Fletcher long and hard. Of course, he knew when and how he took advantage of Brooke. Because lovers did take advantage of each other—Matthew believed this despite his limited experience. Unlimited, however, was his love for her. He loved Brooke too much to assume his usual emotional distance in response to any unpleasantness . He loved her so much he would risk showing anger. He would never stand back, indifferent and aloof. If Brooke were hurting herself, he would make her stop and if that didn’t work, he’d keep trying. Never would he give up on her—on them. He would wait however long she needed. The blasé Mr. King had become a different man the first time he dived after her from the highest waterfall.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

Given half a chance, he would murder her father. A solid kick beneath his chin would break the man’s neck and another to his forehead would shatter his despicable skull.

If this minute, Fletcher failed to admit he had endangered Brooke, Matthew would throttle him. But instead of fixing a second martini, he lit a cigarette and said, “You can stop that now, Bond. I admit it’s my fault. And I assure you, Jimmy Logan will never see Brooke again.”

“That’ll take time, even if you manage to put him in jail. What are you going to do tonight?”

“Sung’s cousin Rhee says her Taekwondo is enough to take down almost anyone. But she needs to learn how to use it. Even on her father.”

“How well do you know Rhee?”

“He works on the Aston and drives me in it every weekend just as Sung did. He’s shy and grew up in some severe Buddhist-Confucius monastery. I observed him closely, asked many nosy questions, and observed some more. He’s heterosexual, twenty-five, and my guess is—a virgin. Small wonder then that Brooke fascinates him. He cannot stop talking about her.”

“Well, that’s just great, Fletcher.”

“You better get used to this, Bond. I’m as gay as men get but your beloved child arouses me to the point where I often get down on my knees and pray, “Dear Lord, why can’t she be a seventeen-year-old boy?”

“Fuck you, Fletcher. I need to get home.”

“Indeed you do. Go! Get out! For all we know she’s died of an aneurysm.”

Matthew ran to his car so fast, Fletcher hoped he hadn’t heard that last cruel remark. Still—he ran outside, waving, and shouting. “Forget I said that! I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything, Bond. I regret my inexcusable negligence; I regret the whole horrible business.”

The Mercedes’ tires squealed and its bumper smashed into the road as Matthew reversed too fast down Fletcher’s perversely steep driveway.

Fletcher’s regret! And yet how regrettable that even in Woodstock, even now, a brilliant, passionate teenage girl was  labeled “bad” because she was beautiful and provocative. How regrettable that her sister said, “Brooke was sexy at six.” And she said in response, “I’m bad and Tara’s good.” And especially, how very regrettable that Matthew’s love for her had led them into mystifying passions they couldn’t control—when by all rights he should have maintained enough sense to honor her youth.

Turning too fast onto the lane home, Matthew stifled the urge (the third in his life) to break down and sob. He didn’t have that kind of time, however. Parking, he the saw the soft skin scraped off her splendid back and the huge lump at the back of her head. But her black and swollen ears never left his mind.

The first liberty he had taken with her was to wrap his arm around her sleek head so it fit inside the crook of his elbow, allowing him to caress her delicate little ear—the top of which crested to a tiny point. Matthew had never touched anyone like that. Undoubtedly, it had occurred to him because of how she rose up beside him, inspired and amused.

Pounding upstairs, his conscience berated him: He hadn’t waited until she was eighteen; he had risked getting her pregnant; and then as she had hoped, she became pregnant—only to suffer seven harrowing hours of miscarrying alone and terrified on the floor. And now, this afternoon, full of compassion and rage upon seeing her injuries, he had asked, what could they do? Meaning, how and where should Matthew beat her father the way he had beaten her?

“Let me ride you,” Brooke answered, whereupon he relinquished all else.

When he made love to her, Brooke claimed, her body rejoiced, free from pain. Yet inside Fletcher’s luxurious bathroom, there had been interims when Matthew should have recovered his judgment: Except those interludes had occurred as fleeting dreams, during which he gaped at her, angelic and drenched in the steamy air.

Finally, arriving inside his moonlit bedroom, he watched Brooke kneeling naked by the bed, her forehead on a small pillow, her arms outstretched.

“Hi.” She turned at the waist, smiling at him, her eyes huge, and her overall appearance unusually ethereal even for her. “I couldn’t sleep without you, Matthew. But that’s a positive sign. Having stayed awake all this time? Means no real concussion, just a come-and-go headache.”

He lifted her up and arranged her prone between twin bolsters. He shed his clothes and gently removed the long, tubular pillow between them. Lying on his back, he asked if she could try resting her head so that her brutally black and swollen ear was suspended in the hollow between his bicep and forearm.

“It feels good, Matthew. You feel so, so good. I’ve missed your smell.”

“I’ve missed yours more, Brooke. But please, sleep.”

“You haven’t said a word about my breasts. When you left, I was between a B cup and a C. Now I’m perfect a C.”

This opened his eyes! Facing her, he smiled as if asking, “Really?” but quickly had to shut his eyes again if he was going to keep his hands off.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t notice,” she whispered.

(click here for the next episode)

Men Take Advantage

The cleaning people arrived and Fletcher pounded on the bathroom door. “Bond, have you been going at her without cease?”

Matthew opened the door a crack. “Some decency, please? Do you have any Bacitracin?”

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

“It’s been three bloody hours! The medicine’s in the cabinet. I’m waiting outside.”

When they finally emerged, Brooke smiled at Fletcher; her hair wet; her clothing loose. Visible in the porch lights were her blackened ears. Fletcher asked, “Can you move your jaw?”

Yes, although bruises blossomed there.

Connie had left the Mercedes in Fletcher’s driveway. Belted in the passenger seat, Brooke felt Fletcher’s sour mood like breath on her neck. “Sir Fletcher is my knight in shining armor, Matthew. He saved my life.”

“You’re a regular prince, Fletch.” Outside Maria’s, he slammed the car door. Fletcher was more than partly to blame: He should have banished Jimmy Logan before dawn.

Fletcher caught wind of Matthew’s silent accusation and tossed his silk scarf in rebuff. He had telephoned Maria, who had his groceries wrapped and waiting for him. Matthew insisted upon paying for them. For him and Brooke, he bought fruit, yogurt, bread, quarts of frozen soup, heirloom tomatoes, and cheese.

“Brooke, would you like dessert?”

“I’m fine, Matthew.” But she was not.

Helping her inside the car, he said, “You were right, Fletcher. I’ve exhausted you, Brooke.”

“I’m always right,” Fletcher said.

Matthew carried the groceries inside and Fletcher supported Brooke, who felt loopy to him, as if she were drunk (a bad sign, he left unspoken.)

Inside the tower’s second level, he asked her, “How many fingers? What’s your mother’s maiden name?”

“Three; Connie Wheeler. Matthew? I’m kind of hungry.” Sitting in the car had been painful. She couldn’t even lean against a counter.

The icy, sparkling lemonade tasted delicious. Matthew poured her a second glass and she asked, “Is it okay to drink this fast?”

His eyes opened wide with concern and contrition. “You’re dehydrated—my fault; I wasn’t thinking.”

“Small sips,” Fletcher said.

With the picnic laid out and candles lit, Fletcher said, “Brooke, dear, try my peppered beef.”

She didn’t eat meat, but he insisted. “You need protein and this is unadulterated. I buy my own cows for steroid- and  chemical-free dairy and meat.”

She ate a thin slice of beef, some grapes, and almonds before kissing his sunken cheek goodnight. When Matthew stood to help her upstairs, Fletcher looked from one to the other. “You’re a gorgeous couple—unprecedented.”

Matthew helped Brooke up the spiral staircase. In the light, he checked her pupils, which were equally large, liquid black, her shining irises true green. The golden pinwheels weren’t evident but they often weren’t. He touched her chin and started to apologize for overdoing it at Fletcher’s, but immediately saw this would only anger her. Since he didn’t know how to take her pulse, he kissed her neck, without any erotic intention until his lips felt her heart beating there. Pressing into him, she kissed him with such abandon he nearly fell to his knees. For once, however, he managed restraint. “Brooke, I love you but you need to rest.”

He settled her face down on his bed and found an eye pillow for her chin and forehead. Her hair was damp and after removing her clothing, he arranged a duvet nearby if she felt like it. “Will you be all right if I drive Fletcher home?”

“I’ll miss you, Matthew, but I’m fine.”

“No, you aren’t, Brooke. If you need me, use this.” He set a phone beside her hand.

“Uh-oh, this is embarrassing but I need to pee.”

“Good. You’re not totally dehydrated.” He slid his arms under her ribs and thighs and lifted her up in one easy gesture. She teetered on her bare feet, “It’s a good for my kidneys, too. Even if there’s blood.” She zigzagged ahead of him and didn’t see him aghast with disbelief. He looked closely at her ears in the bathroom and refrained from commenting.

But she said, “Are they enormous? My head buzzes from the pressure.”

“Let me find a doctor, Brooke, one who respects a patient’s right to privacy.”

“They only do that if you’re eighteen or older.”

“I’ll find someone who agrees to honor your wishes.”

“Technically? I bet seventeen is still child abuse. I’ll tell you if it gets serious.”

It couldn’t be more serious. She let him wash and dry her hands. If someone had told him yesterday that he would love her more today than ever before, he wouldn’t have thought it possible.

At his urging, she drank more water. Then he carried her prone. She extended her arms and said, “Look, I’m flying!”

“Hush.” He settled her back on the bed and asked if she wanted music.

She did but couldn’t say whose. He cued Coltrane’s “Central Park West” and Jose James, which they liked in bed.

“I’ll be back before this ends.”

Downstairs, Fletcher was washing dishes.

“Fletcher, I would have done that.”

“It’s Dickie’s basket.”

Driving back, Matthew said, “I wanted to take her to Mykonos. She’s never been anywhere.”

“Until she’s eighteen, Bond, you can’t take her anywhere. She’s stuck in your tower.”

They entered Fletcher’s now spotless home and he immediately concocted a martini. “Perrier?”

“I need to get back.”

“Don’t worry about Jimmy; I’ll take care of it.”

“You’ll put him in jail?”

“Connie and I will send him away.”

“How?”

“When Dickie and I moved here, Connie was our teenage fan. And when he got sick, she alone visited and made us laugh. Everyone else was afraid.”

“I’m not leaving until Brooke’s safe.”

“Well, stop molesting her then.”

“I know you’re right. She’s always avid but it’s because of being so young.

“Ah! You’ve realized that, have you?”

“It’s easy to forget. You know how extraordinary she is. Men take advantage of her.”

“Do they now.”

(click here for the next episode)

Paradise

The other filmmakers had already left for St. Bart’s. Matthew was at the heliport when his phone rang.

Fletcher’s voice faltered. “Uh—Bond! Brooke needs you! Her father assaulted her outside my house.”

 (click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

“Assaulted her? Tell me she’s all right!”

Fletcher said, “She claims her injuries are painful but not serious. Forget the hospital; she won’t go. Her father…—Christ, man, how soon can you get here?”

“Within an hour—by helicopter. Where is she?”

“In the living room, staying alert in case of concussion, the symptoms of which she seems to know well. Jimmy kicked her in the kidneys but, she says, only bruised them, rather than—oh shit. Tell the pilot to land in the field near my creek.”

Matthew then phoned Connie so he’d have a car waiting in Fletcher’s driveway. “Yes, I wanted it to be a surprise. I’ll be home late tonight for almost a week.”

Unsure if Connie knew what had happened, he listened carefully for sorrow or fear or helplessness—all of which threatened to overcome him, compounded by guilt, his terrible love for her, and oceans of desire. His out-of-control passions left no perspective. Fletcher had struggled to keep his voice steady. Matthew vowed to address the emergency and not allow his lust to interfere. He would nurse her until she healed.

The helicopter landed in Fletcher’s field in record time. Matthew thanked the pilot and hoped to meet again, foreseeing countless trips between here and Manhattan. He ran around to the front and found Fletcher, who looked stricken, holding open the door.

After removing his muddied shoes, he followed him into the living room where furniture was overturned among liquor bottles and broken glass; ash hung in motes; and a haze of stale smoke followed a silent air-cleaner.

On TV “The Wizard of Oz” chirped.

“Where is she?”

“Soaking in the tub,” Fletcher said, before describing the appalling incident, which Matthew’s mind flatly rejected.

“How did he swing her like a lasso?”

“In an arc over his head. Jimmy’s strong and Brooke, as you know, is lithe and pliant. He grabbed her hair by the roots.”

“What did you do?”

Fletcher lifted his gun from the coffee table. “I shot a full magazine into the dirt.”

“Can I see her?”

“Bond, I called you to comfort her. So go do that. I kept the door ajar and have peeked in on her several times. She’s deeply relaxed but awake and breathing easily.”

Matthew bent to hug Fletcher, who turned away in confusion, tears sliding down his sallow cheeks. Then he shook his head as if to push Matthew away. “You are an exceedingly beautiful man. People must gasp in your wake.”

“Smoke and mirrors, Fletch.” Matthew took the martini away from him. “She’s gonna need you.”

“Ah well. It wasn’t helping.”

Matthew telephoned a 24-hour house-cleaning service half an hour away, requesting a team for seven p.m. “I’ve used this agency many times,” he said. “They’re thorough but so noisy you must leave them to their work. And eat dinner with us.”

“No restaurants. No toddlers.”

“Then an evening picnic. We’ll buy delicacies at Maria’s.”

“I don’t—this calamity has me close to grief.” Showing Matthew a vast pantry, Fletcher asked him to grab a wicker box from the top shelf. “Dickie adored picnics. If he were alive—well, if…I would never consort with the likes of Jimmy Logan.” On a counter, Fletcher opened the basket. Fine leather straps held in place dinner plates; various bowls; glassware; cutlery; and checkered cloths.

Matthew asked, “Did you and Dickie use this?”

“We did. If Brooke’s up to it, can we use it tonight? Except, what am I thinking? It’s too cold for a picnic.”

“We’ll picnic inside my tower. Watch your movie, Fletcher. I may be awhile.”

“All right, yes. Ease her pain with your ecstatic suspirations.”

Hushed, Matthew stepped into a chamber suffused with tranquility. But the sight of Brooke’s glorious body floating in green-tinged water rushed up like pure oxygen after weeks of canned molecules. He knelt over her, sick with concern and yet trembling with such lust that off-the-spectrum sounds and colors rippled from his fingertips. He lifted the washcloth from her face, and her momentarily serene gaze bedazzled him until she flew up on bathwater wings.

He kissed her with care, forcing his hands to hover hear her shoulders, not clasp them. But she smiled at him, more thrilled than hurting, and pressed his hands to her breasts.

Once he was naked with her in the voluminous tub, he said, “Let me see, Brooke.” He sat on his heels and steadied her on his thighs. Her beautiful back was gashed across her shoulder blades. A daisy chain of bruises bloomed in purple and black up and down her spine. He winced and yet his sexual craving remained undiminished. Matthew lifted a lock of her wet hair, sucking its tip. Brooke separated swatches and asked him to see if “Pop” had ripped patches from her scalp. Matthew held lengths of her hair between his fingers and seeing the raw patches tried to check his sobs but failed. He said, “Christ, I’m sorry, Brooke,” and wept outright into his hands. He had suppressed the urge when she miscarried, refusing to add to her trauma. He had never cried when his father beat him; he was too proud. But this—this—broke his heart. She turned around and sat facing him. Foam from the bath salts framed her face and decorated her breasts. The quartz pendent hung undamaged, it colors muted when wet.

Gathering his resolve—she didn’t need his sorrow—he splashed water on his face, afraid as he often was to look directly at her. “What should we do, Brooke? What would help?”

“I’m fine, Matthew. Let me ride you.”

“No, Brooke. You’re not fine. Let me dress your wounds.” She wrapped her hands behind his neck and kissed him. “Make love to me,” she whispered. “I’ve been dying for you. Make love to me and you’ll relieve every pain.”

He grabbed at reasons to wait—first things first. How awful that his ghastly lust for her remained undiminished by her injuries and his sorrow. But Brooke was kissing him so passionately, her hands on his chest and then clasped around him as she rose up and settled on top of him—all else disappeared. She gasped his name and they moved within a hypnotic paradise where they rejoiced in each other.

(click here for the next episode)

The Monster

At two in the afternoon each day, Fletcher peaked: his hangover gone, leaving several hours before he honored happy memories and drowned sad ones in gin. Therefore, every Monday Brooke must arrive precisely at two for their work on “Pious Lies.” All theater demanded hair-trigger timing, but if they were using tell-tale action to enliven the dialogue—the only way to go once Brooke suggested it—unerring precision in all things became “uttermost.” Fletcher would stand at his back door waiting for her. “Off by two beats, Abominable.”

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

This morning she rode her bicycle to Echo Lake, shouted her secrets to the lake’s hidden cavern, and listened to them bouncing back. She spent many mornings at Echo Lake and knew instinctively when to eat her sandwich and apple; offer the sky an impromptu incantation; speed downhill, across the meadow, and jump her bike over Fletcher’s creek. She could zip up the incline, arriving—he didn’t fool her—simultaneously with him at his living room door.

Two days after her birthday, however, she was still euphoric from Matthew’s phone call. Nobody else, including her, would have guessed a gold puzzle ring and matching hairband would delight her no end. Hearing his voice had been so exhilarating her pulse still ran fast. Hearing him say, “I love you, Brooke,” for the thousandth time was her best birthday present. So maybe she raced too quickly and arrived early that dreary November afternoon—but not by much.

Pop accused Brooke of seeing what she had no right to see. Witnessing this, however, was much worse than when he staggered so drunk he had wet himself. Later, Brooke recalled a pall or wariness after the creek that caused her to walk her bike up the incline. Fletcher wasn’t at the door. Before going inside, she peered through a window at the pale, velvety room. Cocktail glasses, some of them smashed, lay all over. Liquor bottles were strewn on the carpet. Ashtrays overflowed. And across Fletcher’s armchair two men were performing a medical procedure, except…that wasn’t it!

The bottom torso looked ghostly. But it was just Fletcher. A familiar man was slamming into his backside. Her Pop’s dark green shirt was unbuttoned; his pants puddled over his feet. And his butt showed beneath his shirt.

Run! He’ll kill you! But Pop’s head bucked—and in the split-second she watched it jerk, maybe he spotted her. Or more likely, he looked up when she dropped her bike to run down the incline, across the creek, and into the trees. She wrapped herself around the base of one, anticipating surreal pain. She closed her eyes and he yanked her up by her hair, swinging her above his head.

He twirled her like a cat by its tail before slamming her back against the tree trunk. Then he grabbed her ears like handles and spun around before hurling her full-length against the tree again—the entire back half of her, which wouldn’t show so much. Finally, he threw her to the ground, and scrambling, she wrapped herself tight around the nearest trunk.

He was kicking her when Fletcher stumbled through the creek, his raincoat flapping. He yelled, “Start running, Jimmy,” and shot a pistol. Deafening sound, and then: “Run, you motherfucker!”

He fired into the ground and reached for Brooke’s hands, helping her up. His face looked pinched and raw; his nose and eyes were leaking. “Forgive me, Brooke! I’m sorry.” His trembling hands smoothed her hair without touching her bruised and bleeding head. “If he comes near you again, Abom—Brooke—he’s dead!”

Wearing an unbuttoned trench coat and nothing else, Fletcher bobbed before her, his face sunken and pursed as if in grief. Gripping her elbows, he tried to lift her but wobbled. “Can you walk, dear?”

“Of course.”

He protested but lurched sideways. She held him up and they crossed the creek.

“Nobody’s ever rescued me before, Sir Fletcher. You were heroic.”

“Rubbish!” His arms flew up, seeking balance. Brooke saw what he wanted and picked up his gun.

“Thank you, dear.” He slipped the pistol inside his pocket. “I’ve gotten too old for this.” He choked and bent down retching, turning away to wipe his mouth on his sleeve. He let Brooke hold his hands, leading him, appalled, into his disheveled home. “I knew your father was a monster, just not to what extent.”

“Me either,” Brooke said. “You should hear him damning the damn ‘sodomites.’”

Flinching, he dismissed hypocrisy, helped her off with her jacket, and asked if she could wait while he dressed.

“Of course.” Brimming with adrenaline, she chattered heedlessly: “…I’m the bone of his bone; the offending eye he plucks out. Tara is not. She’s the good one and I’m the bad.”

Reappearing in slacks, slippers, and a button-down shirt, he handed her a glass of Perrier. “You are not bad, child. You are brilliance in the opaque night.”

He sipped a martini. “Drink the water, small sips, while I call an ambulance.”

“No, Fletcher, please. Not unless my brains leak out.”

“Ah,” he fell onto the couch. “When Dickie was sick, we spent weekends in the ER; months in hospitals: One pneumonia, two pneumonia…At least he died here, at home.”

“I’m sorry, Fletcher.”

“Yes, me too. Dickinson and I bickered from beginning to end.”

Patting her shoulder, he said, “Excuse me, my dear,” and left the room again.

Brooke lay on her stomach, pressing her forehead into the carpeting, and gingerly lifted her T-shirt. She touched a raw patch on her spine. Her cuts were big, wide gouges. Her head ached and she checked her ears in case they were ripped off or half-off. She heard an awful buzzing, but knew the real pain wouldn’t take hold until tonight or tomorrow. He had kicked her in the kidneys—searing, near-black-out pain that had already faded. (Good thing she’d already had that miscarriage.)

Fletcher returned with another glass of Perrier and a prescription bottle. “Percocet. Help yourself, my dear.”

“Not until I’m positive my head’s okay, but thanks.”

“Small sips, Brooke. You need fluids to wash away the toxins.”

“Fletcher, will you promise not to tell Connie? She gets so…guilty…”

“Yes, Brooke. You’ve got my word. And me, my Walther PPK, no hospital, no painkillers. What about soaking in a bath?”

“You don’t mind?”

 “I’ll wash the towels.”

She entered a huge bathing room with pebbled glass windows and leafy plants. Fletcher sat her on the edge of the tub and knelt to remove her bicycle shoes. “Can I help you with your shirt?”

“I can do the rest, Fletcher. You saved my life.”

He handed her a bottle of muscle-relaxing bath salts. “Soak for ninety minutes or there’s no point.”

The hot water and Molton Brown thermal crystals stung horribly at first. But then she floated, hushed and dazed. A washcloth covered her eyes. Twice she added hot water before hearing Matthew’s voice. A door opened. She dreamed him saying her name in the quietest whisper.

And then—she did not lift the washcloth. He did.

(click here for the next episode

Razor's Edge

The filmmakers were ahead of schedule and the dailies so amazing that a producer scheduled a weeklong vacation in St. Bart’s for them—right after they finished shooting in New York. The "Readiness Is All" “family” looked askance when Matthew chose to go to Woodstock instead. (To each his own.)

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

 His next scenes were at New York Harbor. The boat chase and guns and Taekwondo followed as planned. The drowning scenes were awful. Both Sung and Harold assured him the underwater action wasn’t nearly as dangerous as everything else he’d done. And Harold swore it would be worth it. Ultimately, James Bond drowned Otto’s accomplice, a villainous giant.“The audience will see Bond in real distress—not his double. People have learned to look for fakes.”

Underwater takes were limited to two minutes, union rules. But Matthew dreaded the eye gouging and strangleholds. He told the giant, a veteran of underwater stunts, that he’d never even punched a man on screen before.

“Pretty good with those kicks to the head, though.”

The drowning scene would run four and a half minutes, three point six of which, Bond was choked, throttled, and head-butted unconscious. He sank to the bottom, apparently dead, while the giant swam to his boat, a whirlwind of arms. Marshaling life-or-death adrenaline, Bond gauged time and distance, rose for breath, and began stealth-swimming below his adversary. Suddenly, in another deadly struggle, Bond attacked the giant, drowned him, and made sure he stayed drowned.

Matthew struggled through two nights without any useable footage and told Sung he worried he would rob everybody of St. Bart’s.

Harold, then, invited Matthew to breakfast. “Two nights of blown takes is nothing. Several times, you had it but someone else blew it. And it will look superb.”

After nine tortuous nights, they wrapped it. Matthew watched the dailies with Sung and Harold sitting on either side, saying editors would make the separate takes look like one horrific fight, which of course Matthew knew.

On Halloween during their fencing practice, instead of calling out the phrases and pauses for Matthew, Sung talked to him. “It’s unfortunate you can’t take a helicopter to Woodstock and trick-or-treat with your kids.”

“I thought it was worth a try. But I suppose I should have been scrupulous.”

Landing a point, Sung said, “You posed it well, Matthew. One small deviance.” He doubled back. “You were almost scrupulous.”

Slowing the pace now, Sung glided forward. “I spoke to my cousin Rhee.”

“Does he like Woodstock?”

“Rhee is honorable, Matthew. But I want you to hear from me that he’s teaching Connie’s older daughter full time.”

“Full time?” Matthew lunged and recovered.

“He instructs her every other day. One or two hours. She shows promise. He’s interested in her.”

“How interested, Sung?” Matthew stopped. Sung urged him to continue and focus.

“He has no other students now. After soccer season, he will begin regular classes.”

An hour later, Sung asked Matthew if he wanted to call and wish her a Happy Birthday. “You must be brief and then bring my phone directly back to me.”

Woodstock celebrated Halloween to the hilt, starting with a parade at five. With luck, Brooke would stay home.

He showered and tried to rest but watched Brooke jumping up and down in Connie’s soccer videos, and as usual  released his simple, most basic lust with sorry efficiency. He drank sports milk as Sung now insisted. He read her letter to him. He read a book about Yeats and Maud Gonne to sit still despite his mounting anxiety.

Near five-thirty, he scrolled his home number, using Sung’s mobile, which wasn’t a cheap disposable but new and expensive.

“Brooke.” There was the catch in his voice that sometimes took him by surprise even when he had spent the day with her. Her routine, “Hello,” thrilled him.

“Brooke! Happy Birthday.”

“Matthew! Is it safe for us to talk?”

“Sung’s letting me use his phone because it’s your seventeenth birthday.”

“Thank you for the ring and headband. I thought the Yeti was my birthday present. Matthew, only you would know to get me a gold puzzle ring! And the same rose gold sparkling from the headband!”

“Brooke,” he laughed, hearing her voice. “Do you hate the poster? I knew you would. An actor wanted me to send it.”

“You look so hot it’s combustible.”

“How are you? Do you still love me?”

“I love you so much that I’d rather suffer being apart, which is killing me, than not love you.”

He hadn’t considered this but then remembered classic poems that spoke of romantic love and suffering. “Brooke, you’ve no idea how much I miss you. I love you and miss you constantly.”

“Last night I went inside your tower for the first time. I opened your closet mirrors and took off my clothes except for my new ring and headband, and the pendant. I jumped on your bed, Matthew. My breasts are bouncier than the smoky quartz necklace.”

Her breasts! “Did you sleep in my bed last night? Did you find the chemise on your pillow?” He burned with violent happiness in the brightest fire. His desire for her recalled the first days of summer when he dared not touch her but then always found a way to finger her perfect little ear.

“Matthew, I love you so much I want to cut myself.”

“Jesus, Brooke. No! Cut yourself—where?”

“Nowhere that shows and not deep. And I’m not—I won’t. Promise.”

“Brooke, confide in Connie. Or Tara, isn’t she there on the weekends?”

“The first week of November I start assisting Fletcher with ‘Pious Lies,’ this terrible play. We’re staying in a brownstone that belongs to his friend who’s travelling. Fletcher’s been very mean and funny but I’m still excited.”

“You’ll be in the city the first week of November?” That was his week in Woodstock. Well, Brooke and Fletcher could helicopter home. If they took helicopters, she could sleep with him every night—that is, if she would.

“Brooke, Sung says you’re taking Taekwondo.”

“Yeah. Rhee knows someone who teaches it in a studio near the brownstone. So I won’t have to spend every evening with Fletcher.”

“Do you like Rhee?”

“Yes. But I love you so much I want to take a razor to my skin.”

“Brooke, you have softest, most beautiful skin of anyone born. Don’t you dare cut it!”

“I said I won’t.”

“I get angry I miss you so much. And I’ll be furious—and shit, just sick—if you hurt yourself.”

Sung was at the door but Matthew didn’t open it.

“I can’t talk much longer. Sung wants his phone. Please say you love me, and won’t hurt yourself.”

“I love you, Matthew.”

“How much?”

“I love you for calling me on my birthday. I love you out of my mind. I love you and I won’t hurt myself.”

“Brooke, I’ll be there sooner than you think.”

 They said good-bye and Matthew opened the door. Sung held out his hand for the phone.

“Thank you.” They bowed and when Sung left, he closed the door.

He called Fletcher from his own mobile phone. “Is she all right?”

“Predominantly, yes.”

“What about cutting herself?”

“On TV it preoccupies unhappy teenage girls. Never, however, shall I allow Abominable to succumb to self-mutilation. For I, too, have come to love your queer little demon.”

“Then be nice to her.”

(click here for the next episode)

Rights and Wrongs

Dex claimed that he had the right to stay awake later than Ivy. He was older. So after Brooke read them a bedtime story, he waited under his covers while she smoothed Ivy’s hair and said, “Sweet dreams.” They all loved the ritual but Dex fidgeted until Brooke realized he wanted her to sit and talk with him. He rolled as close to her as possible and asked for her hand, twisting her fingers. “I have crush on a girl named Marley. Do you still have a crush on Dad?”

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

He rolled away and stared up her.

“Yep.” Sometimes she said, “Of course.”

“Even though you can’t talk to him on the phone or text or anything while he’s James Bond?”

“Nothing’s changed, Dex. And don’t worry, it won’t.”

After she kissed his forehead and turned out his lights, Brooke wished she did have a crush on Matthew. Because with a crush you didn’t crave the other person’s body in every intimate detail. You didn’t dream he was making love to you and wake up alone. You also didn’t dream he was calling your name, but as loud as you yelled back, he was never gonna hear you. You weren’t deprived of the transformation and wild, reverent elations you had shared in the world of him and you. With a crush, you never lost your only desire. You didn’t despair for being the one who had insisted he take the part, leaving you stranded. And if a crush abandoned you? Watch a movie or a take bike ride and you’d feel fine—never better.

When Fletcher had shouted out her tottering little love letter into the night, Brooke vowed never to return. Never to hear yet again about the angelic but tough sixteen-year-old punk, “Markie” Fletcher who had utterly captivated Sir Jeremy Dickinson. Or how together they had invigorated "Jesus Christ Superstar" halfway through its eight-year run. And then how Dickie’s old school chum had always included a few of their lyrics in various musicals, making their fortune.

But come Monday morning, her resolve had weakened. Brooke had an idea for Fletcher’s Off-Broadway play and didn’t want to lose it. At noon, he phoned, alternately flattering her and foreseeing disaster if she failed him.

“Fletcher,” she said, “I caved early this morning. I’ll be there at two,” but he continued his harangue, which ended with a bribe: Matthew had sent her “presents,” which he swore he hadn’t opened.

She wheeled her bicycle through his back door, into his living room. He stood smiling and holding a confectioner’s box. “Abominable, I hope you like chocolates. I bought you twenty exotic varieties from Maria’s, ones she recommended.”

“Chocolate gives me hives.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Fletcher, please. I’m allergic to all chocolate and cocoa.”

“Will you accept my apology nonetheless? Do you like walnut caramels? I’ll go out now.”

Without a driver’s license, but why remind him? “Just promise me you won’t read our rationed mail.”

“I can promise you this absolutely: I shall never reveal anything I’ve learned furtively. I’m sorry for taunting you, Abominable. It was beastly of  me. Now might we discuss the play? I cannot begin to approach it without you.”

“Well, you just might have to, if you can’t respect my privacy.”

“I apologized. Do you like apricot squares? I’m sorry for being an incurable intruder, and admit I’m fixated on you and Bond both—or we never would have become the dear friends we almost are.”

He had refilled a glass of claret and handed her a tumbler of Perrier tinged orange with bitters.

Too anxious to sit, she asked if he minded her pacing.

“Not at all. I prefer watching your boyfriend walk, but objectively, Abominable, you are the more compelling beauty, the queerer mind.”

She stepped slowly but still felt jittery. “In the first scene, when the twenty-year-old son says, ‘Good-evening, Father,’ it’s ridiculous, right? But what if he notices a stray hair on his father’s coat and without thinking plucks it off. The father’s first reflex is alarm. His second reflex is to smack his son. His arm is up, his hand out when the mother enters, asking, how are ‘her men?’ The father’s timing leaves it open: did he stop on his own or because of the mother?”

Fletcher had drained his wine glass. He wanted a martini but even at his worst, he waited until five o’clock. He poured more claret from the decanter and asked Brooke to sit down. “Good Lord, Abominable! It’s a splendid idea, no question. But where did it come from?”

“I don’t know, but it creates tension. If we give the characters the right gestures, the ultra-dull language might seem like their way of looking away.”

“Now that you’ve described it, there’s no other way to stage it, is there? But how did you, who, if you’ll pardon me, has been nowhere and done nothing, dream up this interpretation?”

She sat when he asked but now she stood again and cocked her slender hip. “You don’t know my Pop, Fletcher, but he’s as pious now as people a hundred years ago. And while I don’t know for sure—except that he’s a drunk—I bet anything he’s a hypocrite. In fact, I wonder if piety feeds on hypocrisy and vice versa.”

“Isn’t piety outdated, Abominable?”

“Not with him. And not in the play.” Brooke paced again. “Pop lectures me about impure thoughts—outdated but not to him—and I’m like, ‘No worries, Pop, I’m neuter,’ and Jee-zus, you would think I had just slaughtered every Christian who ever was, is, or will be.”

Fletcher had drained his glass again. He lit a cigarette and used it to act busy. “Your lover sent gifts; I presume for your birthday.”

“Did you open them?”

“Not yet.” He retrieved a mailing envelope and a cardboard cylinder. “Please open the larger one here. That should satisfy my need to meddle.”

She peeled off the tape and eased out a poster-size photograph of Matthew.

Fletcher whistled, “Bravo, Mr. Bond,” and held the poster so Brooke could look at it.

The photograph ripped a raw and painful swath inside her. “Bravo, Mr. Bastard. Mr. Asshole.”

“Abominable, can’t you see he loves you? That’s why he sent this. He loves you past all endurance. Being without you feels like war.”

“I abominate him, Fletcher. I wish I’d never met him.” Brooke rolled up the poster. “He makes me sick.”

“Bloody hell, you have no idea what people suffer! You won’t find a man half as good, who loves you half as well.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do, Abominable.”

“Really? Well, I don’t want to fuck so many men I lose track.”

“Nasty little brats do not become play directors or playwrights, Abominable. Give me the poster. I’m in love with him and don’t know what the hell is wrong with you.”

She slid the photo inside the tube, collected her things—and just to annoy Fletcher—rode her bicycle out his front door.

(click here for the next episode)

The Mysterious Mr. Bond

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Ingrid Johnson (Charelle), Director of Antiquities, and James Bond sit at a table in the Balcony Bar on the mezzanine. Ingrid is in her thirties and wearing an expensive, peach-colored dress. Her hair is subdued blonde and she’s slipped off her high heels while they discuss Otto Munk.

  (click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

“The first theft occurred a year ago and has escalated to a few every day,” she says, lifting her eyes.

“When did he begin stealing from the display cases? Grecian urns, I was told.”

“As of last week, James. Sometimes lately he takes an object and then returns it, no damage done.”

“Otto, who’s so odd-looking, does this during your busiest hours?”

“We see him on surveillance; but nobody’s seen him in the flesh, despite being on constant alert.”

A waiter sets down two cups of espresso. The camera moves to Bond’s dark, almost fiery blue eyes and pans down to Ingrid’s stocking feet. When her foot accidently slides over Bond’s shoe, he very softly hums two lines of “As Time Goes By.” A casual nod caps his compliment.

(Charelle didn't know liked Matthew to improvise but smiles at the allusion and lifts her cup.)

(Harold signals to keep going.)

Bond holds her gaze as she sips and then surmises the vast museum above and below them. He turns his head as if listening for a specific sound among the crowd. “Are the things he steals mostly vessels, something that might store mineral salts, contraband?”

“I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, James, they are.”

“We believe Otto’s planning an all-out raid Friday evening.”

She nods. “Yes, the museum stays open till nine p.m. Friday and Saturday.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I know exactly when you’re open, Ingrid.” Rising from his chair, he says, “Excuse me,” and jumps over the railing, flying to a ledge flanking the great marble stairway. From there he leaps down into the main hall where he catches a spinning bronze square. Otto cackles off screen.

(Cut.)

“Rather daring,” Harold says, “humming a tune. But look on the video: inspired flirtation.”

“I don’t know why I did that. Maybe because of your hairstyle, Charelle. And the name change—from Mia to Ingrid.”

“Homage to a producer’s sudden new wife,” Harold said and spoke to Sung from an earpiece. Could he please find from the crowd of extras a teenage boy and girl who have never heard of Casablanca or the actress?

In two minutes, an assistant presented a boy and girl. They watched the video, and the boy said, “Smooth. If I hummed a tune, trying to pick up a girl, she’d laugh.”

“Everything Matthew King does is sexy,” the girl said. “What other James Bond could go ‘Da-dee-da-dee-da-dum’ to get the girl ready for…whatever.”

Jenna arrived from make-up, asking if Charelle minded a new application. She said of course she didn’t mind but let Matthew know, “Thanks a lot.”

He sipped Evian and told Harold, “I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe we should try it both ways.”

“We’ll see. I think it’s extremely clever.”

Matthew had already finished Bond taking out Otto’s band of criminals on a crowded Friday night. Sung had directed his timing and managed the crowd. And he’d taught him to execute several powerful kicks from a walking stance. His inner and outer crescent kicks looked effective within very little space. He kicked the side of the villain’s head and an operative working as a security guard shouldered the incapacitated man to the nearest freight elevator.

The cameras and equipment were more imposing than anything Matthew had encountered before. But he transferred all his anxiety and the pressure of separation into the relaxed energy Fletcher had taught him to project. The sequences were complex, however, and involved so many people and moving cameras that Matthew performed take after take, eager to get it right.

When Charelle’s make-up and hair were distinctly reminiscent, they did the scene again, and the follow-up, where he shows Ingrid the bronze kohl holder and the dusting of blue phosphorescence inside.

Harold was so pleased he insisted Matthew and Charelle take the first limousine.

“After our seduction scene tomorrow,” Matthew said, “you can go home to your kids.”

“No, I’m going to St. Bart’s with the crew. Harold’s certain there will be a free week before the rest of you are due in London. But you’re going home that week, aren’t you?”

“I’ve got an entire year of this to go, Charelle.”

“Jeffery our dear, gossip-prone agent told me you’d changed.”

“Since Sasha left, never to return, thank God, I take my children seriously and wish I’d paid more attention to them sooner.”

“Will you eat breakfast with me?” Charelle asked. “Room service.”

Nobody liked the lounge except in a group. Matthew showered and—shaved—which he never did until after he’d finished exercising and practicing. Connie had sent him a lightweight, dark green sweater (not to mention many videos of Ivy and Dex, with long spontaneous intervals of Brooke.) He wore the sweater, dark jeans, and James Bond’s black Nikes.

Charelle opened the door wearing a lavender dressing gown, which, when he looked again, was semi-transparent. She’d ordered eggs and waffles but poured them each a cup of coffee, which they drank sitting side by side on a window seat.

“So,” she said, “you think I look like Ingrid Bergman? Nobody else does.”

“They must,” he said, (although she didn’t.) “Perhaps they’re shy. Not everyone can carry a tune like me.”

“That’s true.” She crossed her legs, which like her feet were bare. “Tell me about her.”

“Who?”

“At first I was hoping we might do it again, Matthew. The fun we had last time. But here you are stirring up excitement with everyone instead of anyone in particular.”

“I like to think that’s my M.O.” Matthew said, slipping his arm behind her waist.

“It wasn’t always. Now when we watch the dailies, your expression, your whole bearing has an air of mystery.” She set her coffee on a table and tapped his chest. “Harold’s thrilled—the new James Bond, his James Bond, is a mysterious romantic hero instead of a playboy or a thug. Have you seen the posters?”

“Charelle, you’re teasing me.” He put down his coffee and shifted so he was facing her.

“I’m not. You’re oblivious because you’re always working or training or rehearsing.”

“Well, the range and scale are daunting.”

“It doesn’t look daunting when you’re on camera. Easygoing as ever but for brief pauses when James Bond longs for unattainable ideals.”

 “That’s nonsense.” He held a finger to her lips before kissing her. And then, “More?”

“Yes.”

“And this?”

“Oh yes.” Charelle liked everything about Matthew and always had. But when he slipped her robe halfway off, she pulled it back on and stood up. “You and whoever she is belong together.”

She retrieved a rolled up poster from her closet. “I asked for this when they were selecting favorites from the stills. Send it to her.”

Handing him the poster, she led him to the door. “I’m not being noble, Matthew. By this afternoon you’d hate me.”

Back in his room, he phoned downstairs to send her a box of irises and a box of roses with a note thanking her.

(click here for the next episode)

Embarrassments

Being on a soap opera was supposed to stand Tara in good stead in the industry. But playing the bulimic, amnesiac Sienna was an embarrassment.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

When she called Brooke with—finally—good news! Her internship with Matthew’s money manager! Brooke already knew every detail.

“Don’t tell me you talked to him—and ruined his career, the movie, yourself, and me.”

“You bitch, Tara. You can be so mean! I might never hear his voice again.”

“Well, then who told you?”

“Sung’s cousin, Rhee, who’s giving me private Taekwondo lessons.”

“Really,” Tara said.

“He’s teaching me for free because he thinks I’m talented.”

“I’ll bet. Matthew’s gonna kill him.”

“No, he won’t. I no longer exist in his world.”

“Because you haven’t gotten a love letter from him? You’re being stupid, Brooke. How does Rhee know about my internship?”

“Sung must have told him.”

Matthew’s private foundation was Tara’s dream come true. Working online with his money manager, she ran projections on a million potential grantees, arranged contributions to Off-Broadway ventures, and sent letters of intention so the theaters could plan their season. This also eased Matthew’s name into a position where the community would automatically think well of his friends.

“He’s doing this for Fletcher?” Brooke asked.

“God, I hope not. I hate Fletcher. I thought he was doing it for you.”

“No. I may not exist but I’ll betcha he still wants me to go to college. I miss him so much I wish I were dead.”

“Shut up, Brooke. You’re not allowed to have a death wish: Think how selfish that is—just because you’re unhappy.”

Over the weekend, Tara answered the phone when Matthew called. The first time he asked how her sister was. “Fine.” And then, “Tell your sister I say, hi.” Tara said nothing until she was going back to the city. “On the phone Matthew said I’m beautiful and a genius.”

“It’s true,” Brooke said.

Tara sighed. Every time she tested to see if Brooke was as nice as she seemed, she was disgustingly kind and generous and ten times more tolerant than Tara. Brooke didn’t mind if Fletcher was verbally abusive or bragged about being a homosexual or was just always in her face. And Chase? Granted, he was never in anybody’s face, but he was totally creepy.

“What the fuck, Tara. He’s old and addled but he’s honest and even sweet about it. His ponytail and fake tan are remnants of a time when he wasn’t raggedy but young and beautiful. Why can’t he even have remnants, Tara? Everyone isn’t as lucky as you.”

Hauling her stuff from the car onto the bus, Tara said, “Yeah. Can I call you tomorrow?”

By lunchtime the next day, Brooke couldn’t stand it anymore and phoned Fletcher. “Why haven’t I gotten a letter? The one I wrote him has been crumpled in my jacket for a week.”

“Ah, Abominable! I was just thinking of you. We have much to discuss.” He wanted to interpret the play and make-up a fantasy cast.

“All right. But do you know why Matthew hasn’t written to me?”

“Be here at two. The back door, please.”

She rode her bicycle up Mountain Road, onto Fletcher’s driveway, and laid rubber on the slate path. Taking off her helmet, she remembered he wanted her to cross the creek and arrive at the back door.

Maybe next time, Brooke thought, pushing the doorbell. Fletcher was watching through the leaded windows. He opened the heavy door, sucked on his cigarette, and blew smoke through the screen. “Around back, Abominable.”

“Fletcher,” Brooke said, “who’s gonna care about a couple of queers like us hanging out?”

“Couple of queers?” He feigned outrage.

“That never occurred to you? I may not be the same queer you are—but I am Abominable.”

He opened the screen door. And as she wheeled her bicycle inside, he mimed pushing it out. “It cost six thousand dollars, Fletcher.”

“Impossible. Don’t dirty the floor, you impudent wretch.”

When they were sitting in his living room, he laughed. “Couple of queers…Nobody teases me anymore.”

“Wonder why.”

“Another of life’s painful mysteries,” Fletcher said. “Do you have a letter for me?”

“It’s not for you.”

“Yes, it is, Abominable. Me first in this naughty fraud.”

“God, Fletcher, you get off on reading other people’s mail? This is private. I’m anxious about even him reading it.”

“There I can help. Together we can tweak it if need be.”

She shook her head, arms wrapped around herself, hair flying, and smiled her double-dare-you smile, lifting her lips higher on the left.

“Abominable, you’re a beastly little witch. I’ve been anticipating your dulcet descriptions of your first great love ever since Bond left.”

“Don’t you need my assistance with ‘Pious Lies?' I’ve read it so I know: How stiff and lifeless can a play get? All we can do is mainline the fluids and pump it with oxygen.”

“Précisément, brilliant imp! Now as to your correspondence, I’m quite sure your boyfriend has keened about his unquenchable lust for you and how piteously his heart aches without yours beating beside his. Sung’s caution is delaying delivery.”

“I hate this,” Brooke said. “You covering up for him. Sung being in charge. Just forget the whole thing.”

“Be fair. Bond must be in agony.” Fletcher rose to fill his wine glass and offered her Perrier. She winked at him; he liked winking. But he was not getting her letter. Maybe nobody would.

He called from the bar. “Bitters, Abominable?”

“Right-o!”

“Right-o, does Bond say that to you?” He handed her the drink and she smiled at him, full on, not crooked.

He clutched his chest. “Small wonder the man’s so besotted. When we’re rehearsing, Abominable, anytime my insults become too cruel, take the victim aside and bestow your beatific smile upon him.”

“Thank you, Sir Fletcher. Nobody compliments my smile.”

“Will you visit me every Monday at two?” They would discuss how to revive the play. “When we get into rehearsals, Thursday through Sunday, I’ve arranged for us to stay at my friends’ brownstone in Chelsea.”

“You have friends?”

“Of a sort. They’re traveling. His building provides parking so please get your license. Your birthday is when?”

“Halloween.”

“Beware of saying anything queer at the DMV, Abominable. And we’ll use your boyfriend’s Mercedes, since it ought not to stand idle.”

“Connie’s teaching me to drive the Camry.”

“Remain loyal to me, Abominable and I’ll teach you to use your outlandish beauty and queer mentality to achieve greatness.”

“No doubt.”

“Bond’s letter?”

“I’m not sending it.”

“Let me be the judge.”

She was wondering if she should have Tara mail it from the city when sneaky Fletcher stood up and stole it from her jacket. He had already loosened the envelope’s back flap. She lunged for it, but he saw her coming and held it over her head.

Shaking, she got on her bike, opened the door, and rode out of his foyer. He gestured grandly from the steps, his voice booming. “Dear Mister King the most fantastic thing…”

At the turn off, she could still hear him bellowing: “How utterly charming!”

(click here for the next episode)

Dear Mr. King

Dear Mister King, the most fantastic thing  

About Natasha is—she’s so unreal,

Unfettered, a ghost whose love can never bring

Enough desire or passion to reveal

She is your one and only angel here.

Although she cannot stay in time and space,

She wants you to recall that girl last year,

Or no, last week—who misses your embrace,

Your smell and warmth and love that's wildly sweet.

Her love alone is fierce and SO discreet.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

Just a note, Mr. King (whom I love): In the poem I needed to say, “that girl last year” to rhyme with here. But if you’ve forgotten me already, I’m dead and gone. Although  until you tell me otherwise—and so far you haven’t said a thing!—I’ll hang on, because I have no choice. You probably obviously can tell I’ve never written a sonnet before. It was a bitch and a half.

I imagine real poets simply close their eyes and before long their minds fill with beautiful, surprising rhymes in perfect, elegant meters. And they probably add some of the earth’s fleeting truths. Do you know? I’m talking about true poets, of course, and not the hit or miss kind. Although, the only poems I know come from Shakespeare’s plays, the ones we do for the summer theater. This doesn’t keep me from having an opinion, however. In his way, Dr. Seuss was a true poet. I suppose that’s dumb but I didn’t slip it in here because I’m underage! Ivy’s learning to read! She and Chase are going through Dr. Seuss alphabetically and she’s thrilled whenever he knows the words and she doesn’t.

Dex has started third grade on top. Everyone’s his friend because he’s the soccer star. (His dad being James Bond  probably adds to his glamor, but the kids like him for himself; James Bond being so remote to them—to me…)

His teacher Mrs. Ambrose taught Tara and me when we were in third grade and to this day, she remains the only person who knows us both but has never once compared us to each other. You didn’t compare us out loud the way most people do, but those mornings when we arrived wearing our bathing suits under summer clothes? We watched you taking stock, noting the differences between us.

Except Matthew, you couldn’t look at me, remember? That never happened to me before: a guy turning away, covering his eyes, and moving back against the wall until he had a chance to run away as fast as he could. It made me feel freakish until Tara, who’s never wrong, said that it wasn’t because you hated looking at me but the opposite. Is that true? Remember how mysteriously after Dex’s swimming lesson, I got out of the pool and you and I ran through the meadow, holding hands? We played in the waterfalls and lay around in the sun while Tara watched the kids. That's how it seems now, but I know I was the one who started it. When you feel guilty, I feel furious, just for a while.

My darling Mr. King, I’ll never regret this summer. Even if things are weird between us when you get back. Think what we would have missed if you had kept running away from me all summer long!

Fletcher’s psyched about directing an Off-Broadway play in November and swears he needs me to be his assistant. (“People cannot tolerate me, Abominable. You may not be able to tolerate me.”) Well, I’ve tolerated him as long as I can remember. So half the week I’ll be working in the city on an antique play where the big tragedy is that the father has a woman on the side. (Boo-hoo.)

Tara hates playing Sienna on the soap opera. She learned everything she wanted to know the first day. She’s homesick as hell and takes the bus home on Friday night. So when I’m assisting Fletcher, from Thursday to late Sunday, we’ll never see each other.

I ride the Yeti all day and most of the night: it’s so fast and so thrilling. It’s worth all the money you spent. I ride to my ritual spot, Echo Lake over the mountain summit. Yell across Echo Lake and the words come bouncing back three times. On my old bike, 1400 feet uphill was a challenge. On the Yeti, I pedal along, same as ever. Speeding down the mountain is a lot like diving from the waterfall, which I don’t do because I promised you. I pedal faster and faster until color and sound, trees and ground rush up together. Sometimes I even close my eyes but I never fall; I never crash.

Which has me thinking about the way Natasha’s poem turned out. It wouldn’t parse or rhyme as long as she was your very own angel for real. Natasha was supposed to love you when I couldn't except she didn't have the desire or passion to reveal who she is. Basically, she's nonexistent. Here's a weak link but after I wondered about that, I wondered, too about this: Why did I think I was ready to be a mother to your baby? I wanted that more than anything but now when I'm not pregnant? I'm not altogether here; I'm certainly not distinct enough to be anyone's mother. Because I'm not exactly well without you, Matthew. I miss you so much I want to die.

An adult Brooke would be blasé. She’d write, “Go all out, Mr. King. And fuck a Bond girl just for me.”

Connie’s teaching me to drive the Camry. On my birthday I’ll get a regular license, not the junior level and will drive Fletcher into the city if this play on 44th Street really happens.

Love, Brooke, your some day sophisticate.

(click here for the next episode)

Recompense

Matthew had told Dex and Ivy he would usually call at dinnertime or else bedtime.

Brooke had told him that her broken heart would disintegrate if she had to say, “Hello, Mr. King…Goodbye, Mr.  King” while everybody listened. And no, calling him Matthew wouldn’t help.

  (click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

Sung thought it best if nobody mentioned either of Connie’s daughters. But Matthew explained that the Logans had given his quick, anxiety-ridden son and his bright, little daughter constant love and attention. “All children need that, Sung, and I was failing them. The Logans saved my kids and me. It would seem unnatural if Dex and Ivy never even mentioned Tara or Brooke.”

“Natural isn’t important,” Sung said. “Being scrupulous is.”

Wrapped up in the extended family, Matthew now loved his children intensely. All summer at Brooke’s insistence, he had taken them on daily excursions solo—unaccompanied by a nanny, housekeeper, or his not-so-secret beloved.

Shortly after he and Connie had settled the terms for her legal guardianship and daily care of Dex and Ivy, which included a salary every two weeks (surpassing everything she had earned in her life); a local bank account in her name that tapped into his without restriction; and, thanks to Tara, extensive medical and dental insurance; Matthew realized he hadn’t included Chase, and hoped that Connie had.

She hadn’t. Blushing her deep, mottled red, she thanked him, however, for inviting Chase to live there with her. “He doesn’t need money, though, and won’t use health insurance.”

“You never know about that.” Matthew spoke to his banker.

Tara disliked Chase’s blond ponytail hanging to his butt and his fake tan and his stoner pose, which probably wasn’t a pose at all. She could see how much Ivy loved teaching him memory games and leading him in call and response when they strung necklaces for the Gallery. But she couldn’t see the unique respect he extended to Dex.

Matthew was sitting in the sunroom, his arm around Brooke, when Tara had said, “Only someone like you, Brooke, would imagine ‘respect’ was visible.”

But Brooke was right. Matthew might have missed the silent dignity Chase paid Dex if she hadn’t said, “Look at them.”

Connie never questioned whether Matthew would have bestowed them with such largesse while he was filming Readiness Is All if he weren’t in love with Brooke. Perhaps it hadn’t occurred to her. It had occurred to Matthew, however.

Leaving aside that unknowable, queasy quandary, he banged his head against another, and felt compelled to tell Connie his intensions toward Brooke. When she didn’t answer, he wondered if his attitude harked from a different era. After all, social norms had long ago risen above such stuff.

But social norms were not the same as people, who often did not rise above the cost of love, even if they hadn’t broken the law. Which, of course, Matthew had—and thus plummeted, grasping at an outmoded custom on his way down. After all, generosity was something. Going to jail would never right his wrongs. Nothing would.

There was no way to undo what he had done—pulling away from Brooke would only hurt them both. Matthew swallowed here, grateful that Connie didn’t hate him. She didn’t even seem interested in the restitution she might leverage. Knowing as she did that Matthew would give and do anything for Brooke. Nobody except his sister Vicky implied that the amount of money he had was unconscionable. Matthew worked hard but not as hard as his mother had, not as hard as Vicky—he worked hard for a movie star.

After having carried his sticky issue this far, he asked Connie if she would accept, tainted as the gesture was, continuing access to his funds as a sign of his commitment to love Brooke forever. “Please, don’t see it as payment for damages. Lawful and unlawful love alike are incommensurate with money. But it might help somehow at some point.”

“Good Lord, Matthew, don’t worry so much,” Connie said. “Nobody doubts you love her.” 

And just as Brooke had refused his promises, Connie, too, told him not to swear to anything unknowable. Not much later, though, she bent down, saying, “We all love you.”

Sudden and complete relaxation almost landed him on the floor. Instead, he held onto the armrests, relieved and astonished—his doting mother when she was alive had struggled to talk about love or any other sentiment. And in both phone calls to Vicky this summer, when Matthew said he loved her, she couldn’t respond.

This afternoon, after swimming all morning, Matthew returned to his hotel room, certain that now he would sleep. Except Connie had emailed a video of Dex’s soccer game that included Brooke in the late afternoon sun.  Seeing her kept him awake and preoccupied.

Before joining the film’s larger crew for dinner, he phoned his kids. Chase answered, saying “Sorry, man but Brooke’s not here. She rides that Yeti you bought her night and day.”

Dex wanted to talk. “Dad, is it as much fun being James Bond as it looks?”

Matthew said, “Pretty much,” and told him about lassoing the Hellhound bomb.

“That’s cool, Dad. I mean, even though the bomb was fake, you still had to pull it in. I bet I couldn’t do that.”

“Yes, you could, Dex.”

“Did you get the video Connie made?”

“I did. I’ve never seen anyone get hat tricks like you.”

“Our record is perfect except for that tie because we’re too young for shoot-outs.”

The video showed Dex kicking the ball into the net but it also captured Brooke running along the sidelines, her long, slender legs apparent through her jeans. She kicked high, almost spinning, whenever Dex scored. The camera zoomed in on her heart-shaped face and naturally red lips. Another close-up found her gazing straight ahead, her wide eyes deep and questioning. Her face tilted and her thoughtful gaze took in the whirl around her. Matthew couldn’t tear himself away. The more he indulged in the video; the more he missed her.

“Dad! Are you listening? Tara’s on TV! She stares into a mirror and says, ‘Who am I?’ about a hundred times. Oops. I’m not supposed to talk about Tara or Brooke. Sorry.”

“It’s all right, Dex. Is Ivy there?”

After dinner, Matthew duly reported the conversation to Sung, who said, “Overemphasize to them that they must never mention her. I have secured a studio for Taekwondo and fencing. Every afternoon and evening, more time as needed.”

They heard soft squealing as Charelle spotted Matthew. She hurried through the lounge to hug and kiss him —it had been years!

 “Whoa, you look beautiful, Charelle. I hear you have children now.”

She nodded, “They’re five and three.” She wore a clingy beige dress and shiny beige high heels. The halter neck showed off her pretty shoulders and arms, but didn’t raise her equally pretty breasts to blinding, ethereal loveliness.

“Did you suggest me for this role, James?”

“I would have, but Harold saw you play that sexy high-school teacher. I think they cast you first.”

“Well, they’re wild about you, James. A lethal agent with grace, timing, and a romantic soul.” She walked her fingers across his back, from one shoulder to the other. Then she pressed into him. “Whoever she is has made you a different man.”

Sung politely interrupted. “Practice in an hour; we’ll meet in the lobby. And Matthew, if you don’t eat more, you’ll need to drink sports milk.”

“I’ll eat more. See you in an hour.”

(click here for the next one)

The Tao of James Bond

Before leaving the museum, Harold signaled the crew. “Take a look at the video assist.” The scene was a marvel. 

“Once in a lifetime,” the grip said.

 (click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

 “Unprecedented, said the A.D., second to Sung for this shoot, but no longer complaining.

While the crew packed up the equipment, Harold showed the scene to Mathew, Sung, and Otto (nobody was calling him Lars anymore). The immediacy of James Bond trying to snare the bomb practically supplied its own music. Sung’s rising star soared; Matthew’s performance epitomized “grace under pressure;” and Otto was a lethal, leering, hilarious villain—as Harold, and only Harold, had spotted in casting.

The Tribeca Grand Hotel welcomed the film-makers long before dawn. Additional cast and crew for the seaport sequences would arrive throughout the day. Everyone would meet at dinner. For now, the bar and buffet were thoroughly stocked and anything on the menu was available. Technicians gathered around Matthew, dropping hints about his Manhattan hook-up, so routine were his casual liaisons with actresses or any beautiful woman working with him.

Drinking Pellegrino with bitters, he told the crew that if he were betting, he would bet no-go for now. He and Charelle had starred in a mini-series two seasons ago, putting that in the fun-but-done category.

And here came little Kim-Jo wandering through the lounge in a fluffy white mini-dress with a wide black cinch beneath a pair of breasts so oversized they preceded her into the room. Twenty-one-years-old and alarmingly skinny, she giggled before Matthew. “Hello again.”

He asked if she had seen their screen test. “I thought we looked great together on camera.” And it was true: From most angles, Kim-Jo’s freakish body appeared marvelous if unbelievable. Matthew half-hugged the tiny girl, afraid she might break.

Harold, who had asked Kim-Jo to accompany him in New York although her scenes came later, in London, waved her to his side and a camera grip asked Matthew, “Your real opinion, Mr. Bond?”

Aware Sung was standing beside him, Matthew held up his palms. “Way too young for me.” (The actress was five years older than Brooke but seemed like a child; while Matthew’s beloved teenager could teach them all a few lessons.)

Sung would never challenge him in public, yet Matthew waited for someone to say, “Too young? That’s not what I hear.”

Instead, someone said, “Too young might be one reason. But more predominantly are those other two.” The men snickered and Matthew smiled but said, “Let’s not be mean. She looks fine on camera.”

Soon after that, he said, “Good night, I mean, good morning.” And, “See you at dinner.”

He was standing in the lobby while the concierge coded his plastic key-card, when Sung invited him to visit his suite. “We’ll have room service. Do you like oatmeal?”

“My favorite,” Matthew said. After cleaning up, saving the cold shower for the pool, he pressed Sung’s number.

The door to his suite swung open. “Superior performance, Matthew. I honestly didn’t know if practicing was better for you or not.”

“Obviously not, possibly because I have complete faith in you, Sung.”

He bowed, clearly pleased.

On the table were two servings of oatmeal and two pots of tea. “The black pot is ginger, which reduces inflammation. The blue is licorice root and chamomile to help you sleep. Your reflexes and speed, Matthew, are always excellent. But Fletcher has said you never sleep.”

Matthew grinned. “How would he know?”

“With permission?”

“Yes.”

“Fletcher says the girl puts you in such a state—you rest but remain conscious.”

“Fletcher’s fantasies about my private life are his, not mine.”

“True. Also true is that he knows things because he snoops.”

Matthew said, “And he’s the first to admit it. This summer he taught me more about acting than I might have learned in years of training. I consider him my friend despite quarrels and name-calling. Your respect, Sung, I hold in highest esteem.” Uncertain what he meant exactly, let alone how Sung might receive it, Matthew reached for the ginger tea.

“Allow me,” Sung said and Matthew lifted his cup and saucer. When Sung returned them, he realized he had just given him explicit permission. After a sip, Matthew stirred in some honey, and Sung said, “Forgive me, Matthew, but in Woodstock, everyone fantasizes about your private life. They are proud you chose to live there and appreciate everything the Benefit is bringing them. Fletcher explained this to me and I take his word, knowing he exaggerates. On my own, I can say, you must be scrupulous there—and beyond scrupulous here.”

“I realize that, Sung, and apologize.”

“Do not apologize. Your feelings have not changed—that’s the way of feelings. Passion is never reason. But what someone fantasizes in Woodstock remains fantasy. Here, however, nobody can know about Brooke. What people fantasize here, real or unreal, appears on the Internet.”

“Yes.” Matthew sipped his tea, aware that his explicit permission pretty much granted Sung authority over him and Brooke.

After adding special sesame paste to his oatmeal, Sung sprinkled on salt and sugar, forgoing milk, which he said Matthew needed. “I’m buying the martial arts studio. My cousin Rhee will teach Taekwondo in Woodstock, and when I can, I will join him.”

Finished eating, he selected a joint from an old-fashioned cigarette case. “Some marijuana in Woodstock is better than prescriptions.” He offered the joint to Matthew, saying, “Excellent for sore muscles.”

“It cures some people,” Matthew said. “But like alcohol, it’s not for me.”

“Then you are familiar with being scrupulous.”

“No, I’m familiar with abstinence or I used to be. I cannot abstain from Brooke, but I can keep her a secret.”

“So: Everything depends upon your secrecy. May I give you some rules?” Sung leaned back, taking long tokes and Matthew leaned forward. “Yes, of course; I need your help. But there are conditions: I cannot be cut off from her. I cannot lose her.”

 “That is the way of feelings.” Sung’s rules began with their letter exchange: alternate weeks via Fletcher. Matthew agreed to confide where he was going and what he was doing during his time off, and to heed Sung’s instructions. “In an emergency,” he said, “you may use my phone, which I will destroy afterward.”

“Very James Bond.” Matthew smiled, rose from the table, and thanked him.

At the door, Sung said, “You should sleep well now, alone.”

“I’m going to swim first—in the pool next door.” He bowed as he did after Taekwondo and Sung bowed in turn.

Colleting his things to swim, Matthew banished a creeping resentment. He should be grateful: Thank you, Sung, for sparing me from the studio’s lawyers, and worse.

Alone in the vast penthouse pool, the rising sun filtered through sky lights, Matthew swam as if he could reach Brooke underwater. He heard her exalted cries and watched her countless expressions. But nothing lessened his longing for her.

(click here for the next episode)

Readiness Is All

Part Two

The limo arrived for Matthew and Sung after dinner. Everybody came out to say good-bye except Brooke, who lay on the bed in the third-floor bedroom, her muscles clenched, eyes closed, and fingers stopping her ears.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

Inside the limo, Matthew asked Sung to choose the music.

“You choose.”

He found a station streaming new jazz singers and took bottled water from the miniature  refrigerator. Sung took a Stella Artois and poured it into a frosted mug. Today they had practiced fencing at T’ai Chi speed. The foot and blade combinations became arduous when executed as slowly as possible. But Matthew’s technique improved. Sung removed his mask, dripping from exertion, and said they would practice like that until muscle memory kicked in. Matthew had thanked him.

The men sat across from each other. Sung sipped his beer. “I respect your privacy, Matthew, but must tell you: From now on—be scrupulous.”

“I know.” He watched the autumn colors rolling past and in retrospect, an impetuous joy changed to shame. A few weeks ago, Brooke had jumped from the evening shadows into his arms and wrapped her legs around his waist. They kissed outside the Playhouse. And kept kissing until Fletcher ran screaming from his car and kicked Matthew’s ankle. Brooke ran inside as Fletcher screamed, “Paedophile!” into the night. At the time, Matthew had laughed. Now he recalled hearing (but not-then noticing) Sung turning off the engine in his rented car. He had driven Fletcher to the Playhouse because the Aston Martin was in the repair shop, and only after Fletcher finished his tirade did he start the car again. Music sounded as Sung drove away and Matthew helped Fletcher pour a drink from his thermos.

Burning, Matthew lowered his eyes and let the embarrassment crest and fall, before looking up.

“With your permission….” Sung said and stopped.

“Yes,” Matthew said, “you have permission, Sung.” He was uncertain how to interact with his teacher, sometimes called master, outside the etiquette of instruction. Both Taekwondo and fencing required a litany of formalities and displays of respect. The one free-form exercise they performed briefly, was wrestling in the waterfall’s freezing pond while fully clothed. After the second time, Sung had pronounced Matthew fully prepared for his underwater scenes.

The difficulty of Matthew’s stunts hit him and stage fright besieged him. When he had visited L.A., Jeffery had said not to underestimate Sung’s clout. He was a rising star and Harold wouldn’t roll one minute without him. Further, Sung had praised Matthew—saying he rose to Taekwondo’s finer mind-body aspects as no western man he had known before. And then, Jeffery leaned forward, shaking a finger as if upbraiding Matthew rather than congratulating him: “Sung doesn’t praise actors; you’re the first. They’re expecting even more from you than the script shows.”

Tonight’s scene at The Brooklyn Museum was entirely Sung’s idea. He had asked Harold if there were ways to emphasize continuous repeated attempts enacted in one long take. “Yes, indeed,” Harold had said, pleased and excited.

A circus of camera trucks and trailers surrounded the museum, which had closed at five p.m. (when Matthew and Brooke were still holding each other, dreading the months to come.) A frumpy, enthusiastic young woman escorted Sung and Matthew through wide hallways and tech set-ups. They met the camera and light crew and walked around the Asian wing before meeting Harold and Lars Jacobsen—Otto—in the second-level atrium.

For Readiness Is All, the Danish actor had grown a bushy reddish-blond beard. He wore thick round glasses, baggy, knee-length chinos, and huge Birkenstock sandals with black socks. His normal speaking voice sounded like a roar and, even shod in socks and sandals, he looked as if he could toss mountains searching for lost civilizations.

He had been chasing Bond ever since Bond’s Bentley ramped off a twisted tree, sending him  flying over Otto’s greatest excavation. The Ferrari on the Bentley’s tail missed the tree, and had crashed into the archeological site, ruining decades of work. The assassin driving the Ferrari had died and several archeologists were seriously injured. Every few years Otto popped up, hunting Bond but failing. Now he was stealing his archived objects from the big museums—disgruntled, investigators guessed, that his treasures were kept in storage rather than displayed. Division Six had learned he had been arrested in North Korea prospecting rare earth inside the Tombs of Goguryeo. He was immediately freed, however, suggesting a connection with the resurgent SPECTER.

That’s why now, Bond hunted Otto.

Harold expected the picture to be up by midnight. “You have all night to snare your prize, Matthew.”

When he had asked to practice the trick, Sung said, “Best to go at it fresh and feel your way. It took me thirty attempts.”

Passing into a small side room with ancient pots and spoons, they found their spots. Sung waited to signal the extras. They hadn’t practiced the timing for that either. Sung fostered an unshakable faith in Matthew’s reflexes and instincts. Talking to Harold, he had asked, “Can we film it once—spontaneous? In everything but fencing, his timing’s perfect.”

 

“Turn around, scene six, take one—and action!”

Otto peers into the center display case and Bond steps from the corner, Walther PPK and silencer aiming for Otto’s patched elbow. Complete silence. Bond’s finger is on the trigger. Sensing a scuffling from his left, he hesitates, his trigger finger quivers instead of squeezing as fifty school children rush in.

He lowers the gun and turns, still thinking he’ll get a shot at Otto when iron grills fall from the room’s three archways, locking him inside. The grates are adorned with thick filigree and Bond finds his hand cannot fit through the openings. He exams the grill facing the atrium and rattles the bottom, when Otto slouches toward him, close enough so Bond can smell rotten eggs on his breath. He crouches and cackles, “Recompense, Bond, awaits inside this horn/a Hellhound I devised to blast this ground.”

Hellhound—Otto isn’t referring to a supernaturally vicious black dog but to a thermite fuel air explosion. And in his wake, an artifact falls—an ancient ram’s horn—close enough to Bond’s cage to immolate him whenever it’s set to explode, but far enough so that reaching it is impossible. Peering through the iron grill, Bond decides it’s a Jewish shofar, topped, it looks like, by a tiny metallic chip—probably the timer.

The camera tracks him standing up. A hint of a smirk as he removes his belt. Bond slips the leather through the buckle until it fits around three fingers. Worth a try. He lies on the floor, steers the belt under the gate and toward the horn, and in a beat gets it in line with the homemade grenade. He moves his wrist clockwise—and yes! The enclosure wraps around the horn. Pulling it in, though, Bond loses it. The bomb topples far to one side. The angle’s sharply acute.

He pushes the belt forward and the loop collapses. He drags it back and jams the belt’s prong as deep as he can into the leather at the three-finger circumference. The prong doesn’t quite penetrate, but it’s well stuck. Prone on the polished floor, he pushes the belt, rotating his shoulder to get this angle. He’s close but misses, tries again, and again, until finally—there! He’s got it. Loses it; gets it; loses it; gets it and loses it again and again until it’s set at a better angle.The crew is laughing and taking bets and Harold yells for quiet.

Out of range, Sung whispers, “Matthew, thrilling near misses. No rush.”

On every other attempt, he brings it closer. Gets it and drops it but drops it closer. His twenty-third attempt succeeds—the loop slips over the horn, he pulls it between the grate and floor but it’s tight. He eases and teases the horn; spits in his hand twice, using the spittle to lubricate this side and the other. Harold says, “Beautiful!” when Bond stands up with the bomb in his hands.

After removing the timing chip, he pokes inside the horn and yes: thermite, flash powder, and gasoline. Setting the horn safely under a display case, Bond sprinkles the thermite across his prison’s filigree, which serves as tiny cups. Using the flash powder, he ignites one cup and they all flare, melting the metal and leaving a big round hole, through which Bond steps. And from there—runs.

Cut.

(click here for the next episode)

Chemistry Check

Jeffery loved strong, long, handsome men and Matthew King had never looked stronger, longer, or handsomer—or brighter or more confident. Yet, he had requested tighter security and had asked to fly home that same night, only to deny twice the need for emergency PR. The abstentious Matthew King had lost all control to something best left unsaid.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

Harold, the director, told Jeffery, “His table readings were so good I wish I had taped them. He acted calculating and lethal but in unscrpited moments, the emotional tension seemed distant—romantic. His lines sounded casual and polite but like a front while he was sussing out the connection between Otto and the resurgence of SPECTRE.”

Since the movie was delayed by the electricians union, Matthew offered to work “French hours,” (i.e., nine straight hours of filming a day) until they were back on schedule.

“And the ‘chemistry checks?’” Jeffrey asked, still nonplussed by Matthew’s resistance.

“Like the readings,” Harold said. “I hope it’s the same when we’re filming.”

The actresses were nearly opposites. Blonde, well-built Charelle was a popular and accomplished actress, old enough to be plausible as the Met’s Director of Antiquities. The other girl was Harold’s current lover: a tiny twenty-one-year-old Korean with enormous breast implants.

Mathew disliked implants. Harold wouldn’t have guessed.

“He and Kim-Jo looked very erotic, but considering her youth, almost sweet. Whereas Charelle, the pro, rebuffed him before pouncing. No nudity, nothing lewd, but sexier than sin.”

That Jeffrey wanted to see, both tests, if Harold didn’t mind.

All this extra time in L.A., Matthew planned to tell Brooke, upset him, but it allowed them eleven more days together. The writers had used her notes for Hamlet verbatim, although the scene would go through countless reiterations. People were excited.

The limo turned onto the lane and he saw her wheeling her broken bicycle ahead of them. She’d taken off her helmet, and her dark hair swung in a braid as thick as his wrist. “I need to talk to that girl,” he told the driver. “Let me out here, if you don’t mind, and drop the bags off at the door.” Without waiting for an answer, he leaped out, saying, “Brooke! I can’t touch you because the driver’s watching. No, look down, not at me, or I can’t take it. But please, talk to me.”

That charge she had always surprised him. He was almost positive her spiritual energy affected only him and nobody else. “Please, talk to me.”

She laughed. “What should I say?”

“Tell me how much you missed me.”

“No way.” She assigned names to the colors of the changing leaves and noted that the wind made them flutter and the branches sigh. Afternoon shadows formed canopies above them. And, wasn’t the air crisper, the sun golden? Her description of the surrounding countryside coursed through him. When the limo disappeared behind them, he asked her where everyone was.

“Dex and Ivy are in school. Tara’s working on health plans. Nobody expects us until dinner.”

“Drop the bike and see if you can keep up with me.”

Running beside him, she said, “You think girls are slower, don’t you?”

“Not anymore.”

“Cheater. You’re only pretending to run.”

“Brooke, can’t you tell I’m trying to get you upstairs as fast as I can?”

After making love, he spread her unbound hair over his chest. Six weeks apart would seem like no time at all. She refused to talk about that.

If he spoke about not being able to phone or text her, she pressed her fingers against his lips. She’d live through that when the time came. “Not now.”

He tried to promise he wouldn’t fool around with other women, but she said, “No promises.” He wanted her to promise him she wouldn’t tempt fate—no life-threatening feats. But her expression warned him away.

He asked too often if she was angry—she wasn’t. They made love and ate breakfast and lunch in the tower. Matthew asked her about the crash that had knocked a life out of her. But she didn’t want to talk about that either. Although, she did say the doctor had prescribed birth control pills to regulate her moods. “They don’t kick in until right after you leave.”

The GYN advised against getting pregnant again for ten years! Not for any physical reason, but so Brooke could learn who she was first.

“Where is it written that you ‘know thyself’ when you turn twenty-six? I’d understand if she had said to wait until I could afford a baby.”

“We can afford a baby financially. But you need to go to college whether you learn who you are or not. I’ll always regret not going. Would it embarrass you if I enrolled wherever you do?”

“Hell, yes. You’re too smart already, agent 007. Don’t be a pig.”

He followed his exercise and Taekwondo regime the same as always but gave all he had to fencing: One hour—morning, noon, and night. He wasn’t good at it and wasn’t improving.

He attended Dex’s soccer games and painted pictures with Ivy. Before dinner, the four of them walked through the meadows like her first summer babysitting—weird to think that this had started as her second summer.

He had half-hoped to get away for Brooke’s birthday on Halloween. But the investors were demanding the movie get back on schedule, and he doubted the revised production schedule would give him time for a quick visit home—trick or treating with his kids. He’d ask and they’d laugh. After sex in the oversize bathtub, he and Brooke lay dry and calm in his bed and he asked if he could give her a present early. “Diamonds or a fast little car.”

She tickled him. “No and no and you know it.”

“What about land? Want a forest for your birthday?”

She laughed and climbed on top of him. “I want this universe and the one parallel to it. And maybe a new bicycle.”

He researched the best trail and mountain bikes and bought her a Yeti AS-R.

Up until the last minute, they fantasized about running away. But it was pure fantasy: nowhere was safe for them, and besides, Brooke would never abandon Dex and Ivy, let alone steal their father or subject them to public scrutiny. She wanted Matthew to play James Bond; she just wanted it finished before it began.

Fencing grew more and more frustrating. Sung and Chad praised his quick attacks but he admitted the long, thin sword felt awkward.

“Be patient; you’ll improve,” said Chad, who was heading back to L.A. Sung’s reticence meant he was withholding disappointment.

The morning before he left, Matthew gave Brooke watermarked stationery, the envelopes stamped and addressed to the movie’s drop-off box, the back flap embellished in calligraphy: “Natasha,” followed by a P.O. Box that Fletcher had rented.

(click here for the next episode)

Serves Me Right

On the bus home, Tara decided if she couldn’t take the GED at fifteen, she would breeze through every high school requirement online. And while Brooke hadn’t said anything, she was done. A National Merit Scholar with surplus credits, Brookes could ace the AP exams on her own (if she hadn’t already).

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

Connie wouldn’t question them. But Pop? If he heard they were drop-outs, he’d threaten to lock them in a convent—except any Mother Superior would instantly realize that Brooke and Tara were unfit for religious institutionalization. Whereupon Jimmy would curse their wantonness until Brooke condemned his motives and he smacked her to the ground. If she bounced back at him, he’d hit her again before running off, because he couldn’t transform his daughters into pious, holy nuns by bashing in Brooke’s skull—and besides, the next bashing just might kill her.

In the dark, walking from the bus stop to Matthew’s, she hoped Brooke’s anger had burned away. Last night before Matthew carried her off to his tower, she had grabbed Tara’s arm. “Did you tell him I was suicidal? What the fuck gives you the right?”

Well, Tara did more or less say that. She loved hearing Matthew’s confessions—the same ones Brooke hated. Tara’s love affair with Matthew (pure fantasy—which was what she wanted) had begun years ago when she discovered his movies. But what really thrilled her was his urgent whisper, “Tara, what should I do?”

Those words coming from his lips made her spin.

So whenever she could, Tara pulled him aside, concerned about her vulnerable older sister.  And he whispered (sometimes touching her shoulder), “Tara, what can I do?”

Worrying, they agreed, did no good. And yet despondent from missing him, Brooke would surely run wild until she collapsed in sacrificial grief. Although, obviously, neither of them said that, exactly. Approaching the farmhouse, really an estate, Tara hoped Brooke forgave her for stuff she didn’t even know.

In the kitchen—ah-ha, a note: Potato-leek soup on the stove, Jamaican chicken and salad on the table. I’m in the bedroom across from yours. Come get me.

In Tara’s bedroom, they talked about the audition: Open casting for a teenage girl, so who knew? Brooke thought she should always highlight her hair. “You look more like your real self blonde.”

Tara slapped Brooke’s knee, thanking her. (It seemed like Brooke was getting nicer all the time, almost too nice.)  “Wanna watch Children’s Minds with me?”

Brooke groaned.

“I can’t believe you don’t love the TV show, if nothing else. He’s the youngest child-shrink in the country and is the only one who can figure out stuff like a little boy’s nightmares are predicting the news in real life: Earthquakes, hurricanes, bombs raining on some little village in the Mideast—that  kind of thing.”

“Yeah but in real life he’s having sex with the mother. I wish I weren’t like this, Tara, but I can’t watch him and his co-star, knowing he slept with her a lot longer than he’s been with me.”

“Yeah, but Brooke, he always says they didn’t mean  anything to him. He didn’t even love Sasha, except for her having Dex and Ivy.”

“Maybe. But how’s he gonna tell me if he was really sick in love with Charelle Dawson?” Brooke’s huge eyes brimmed and she rolled off the bed, landing hard enough to make Tara wonder if it hurt, after the bike crash and miscarriage and everything.

“Charelle who?” Tara asked.

“Charelle Dawson was the horseback champion in 'When We Meet Again.'”

“He won an Oscar and she didn’t.”

“What a coincidence, though, Tara. Charelle’s the number one Bond girl. But that’s my problem, isn’t it?”

“Oh boy. Has he said if he doesn’t socialize with the actresses as usual, people might suspect?”

“Suspect what? No, he says at my age, I’m entitled to experiment and he’ll wait for me. Translation: Do whatever you want, Brooke; I don’t mind, ’cause I’ll be busy, too. We’ll check back later.”

“That’s not how that translates, Brooke.”

“Tara, if you talk about me with him—at all—even one more time, I’m gonna rip out all your hair.”

“All right but what about his jealousy? Whenever you were seducing Jason into major revisions, Matthew paced in a circle, clenching his fists, and Fletcher had to call him off stage—'Bond, you imbecile! Get down here!'”

Brooke shrugged. “I’ve gotta sleep.” Tara followed her to the door—the bedrooms were huge—and watched her slip inside the one across from hers; each had its own bath.

After watching part of “Palimony,” she knocked on her sister’s door.

Brooke lay naked, flat on her back on the bed, an arm flung over her eyes. She sniffled but didn’t change how she lay there. “Tara swear, okay?”

Tare just gawked at how beautiful Brooke was.

“Swear, Tara!”

“Yeah, I swear.”

“He made me promise to sleep in his bed every night he’s away. Matthew doesn’t sleep or hardly sleeps and thinks he’ll feel closer to me if I sleep in the tower every night.”

“So why aren’t you?”

“It’s too sad.”

The next morning Dex went to school, Chase went to the Gallery, and Connie took Ivy’s preschool on a nature hike. In the kitchen, Brooke clicked on one of Matthew’s quiet jazz playlists; Cannonball Adderley, James Carter—she didn’t know the songs but they made her feel better and you could still talk.

Opening her laptop, Tara asked why either of them had bothered with high school.

“Oh, I learned a few things.” If Brooke hadn’t gotten initiated by that senior from Boiceville, “Matthew would’ve side-stepped me forever.”

Tara doubted that. “You have the credentials to go to any college you want, Brooke. Think global, ’cause Matthew can afford it.”

“That doesn’t excuse us from milking him, Tara.”

“What’s ‘milking him?’ His charity donations could build a small nation. I’ve studied his worth; he’s ultra high net. You didn’t need to insist he play James Bond.”

“It wasn’t because of money and you know it.”

“True.”

“You had no right to snoop through his finances.”

“I know but I told him. I think he’s used to people invading his privacy. Like, that’s the price. And as Connie’s employer, he’s gotta give us health insurance. I’ve narrowed it down to three plans.”

“Shit, Tara, why don’t you just test out of everything and go directly for that Harvard MBA?”

“Will you do me a favor, Brooke? Something serious?”

“What?”

“Two-thirty, Dr. Jessica Ullman in New Paltz. She’s the best GYN around here.”

“Take over my life, Tara. Make it your own.”

“Will you see her? I’ll take the bus with you.”

“You don’t have to come.”

“I want to.”

“I’ll go, don’t worry. I wanna know if I can get pregnant again.”

“I’ll kill you if you do.”

“Not now,” Brooke said. “Not until I’m an MBA or whatever the fuck everybody wants me to be.” The phone rang and she jumped up to get it. “Matthew! Are you almost home?”

“Tell him I need to talk to him.”

“No shit.” Brooke threw down the phone and raced outside. She wished Matthew was dead. The sooner he left, the sooner she could get over him—or get used to never getting over him. Her eyes filled but instead of tears, that terrible nothingness started breaking everything into granules. Pure emptiness. She couldn’t see or hear or feel. She couldn’t breathe. How to explain it? Brooke didn’t die; she just—never—was.

Tara came after her, talking on the phone. “Matthew, I want to. Please. Its’ either Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, or a Blue Cross deal.”

Just as scary as non-existence, and just like that, Brooke had returned to her abominable life. She was hurrying to hop on her busted bicycle when Tara called, “Wait!”

And Brooke made the Biblical mistake of looking over her shoulder. “What?”

Extending the phone into dead air, Tara said, “Come on.”

Deflated—it wasn’t as if she had the will power never to see him again—Brooke tromped back, shaking her head.

“You gotta let him explain.” Tara handed her the phone. “He feels as bad as you do.”

“No, he doesn’t!” Sad, mad and ready to do herself damage, Brooke said, “What!...You cannot make it up to me…No, you can’t.” She pulled the neck of her T-shirt so hard it ripped down the middle. “Yeah, I’ll bet you’re sorry! You goddamn liar!” She hiccupped, almost crying.

And then yelling: “Jesus Christ, Matthew! That’s so fucking cool! And totally true! Of course, I’m serious…Because you are! You are, you are, you are!” Brooke jumped and laughed, kicked and punched the sky. “Ask Tara if I don’t say every damn day that you are from the beginning to the end, the one and only ‘Sexiest Man Alive’!”

(click here for the next episode)

Excerpt

...Nobody of Matthew King’s stature had stayed in Woodstock during her lifetime: Nobody who’d won Emmys and an Oscar; nobody whose TV show and romantic comedies she and her daughter Tara watched most evenings.

A week after sending a representative to look at Windham Farms, he phoned the realty agency. This flustered Connie so much, she said, “One second,” her voice quavering. Luckily, by knocking on the window, she caught Brooke’s attention as she dropped her bicycle and books on the ground—home from school. An overhead bell sounded when Brooke opened the door. 

In a croaky voice her mother said, “laryngitis. Matthew King’s on the phone.” She pointed at it. “He’s interested in buying Windfall Farms. This is too big to lose.”

Nodding as in, leave it to me, Brooke took the phone and cleared her throat of any fake laryngitis. “So sorry to make you wait. My older girl is grounded and was trying to sneak out. What can I tell you about Windfall Farms? It’s perfect for a high-profile couple with two small children. You have photographs? Great. Describe them and I can tell you how accurate they are.”

Connie shook her head and whispered. “Be professional.”

 “Ah, just kidding, of course. The property is twenty acres: three of meadow with wild flowers; ten of virgin forest—that means nobody’s tampered with it…”

 Connie rolled her eyes. But Brooke twirled away from her mother. “Of course you’re familiar with virgin forests. It’s just that words go in and out of usage so fast in this business. Anyway, do you have photographs of the rolling hills? Two waterfalls? Both of which are bitchin’, big-time thrills…First-hand knowledge, because when I was a child, the man who owned Windfall Farms didn’t care if I dived from the highest ledges. And let me tell you: Jeez-us shits! You will not believe the rush!”

Connie tried to grab the phone back. But Brooke held up a hand. “May I run through a description even though you have it? No doubt you’re pressed for time, but talking through the selling points is what being a real real estate agent is all about…

Here for more.

The Stuff of Fairy Tales

Monday morning after Matthew left for L.A. but before Brooke was awake or Dex started third grade, Tara took the bus into Manhattan where Elise Myers would make sure that she got a full-time role on the first soap opera online, which a small company  was making in New York near the old TV studios. Tara only half-believed this but Dorothy had sworn to it.

(click here for the first episode and here for the previous one.)

 At first, Tara had grouped Dorothy, “the best voice coach for European accents in English,” with people who embarrassed her like Fletcher and Chase. Dorothy wasn’t like either of them. But she was middle-aged, fussy, messy, and worse of all, clingy.

They had found a bond, however, when shopping for a body-stocking—a necessity for Lucinda’s costumes as Brooke had envisioned them. Tara and Dorothy were exchanging long, telling glances, vaguely aware that Brooke was at the register, buying things; unaware until later that she used a credit card Matthew had given her for anything she might ever want!

Tara doubted he even knew—that typical Brooke—her first purchase was gifts: For Tara a semi-transparent skirt to remind her of playing Lucinda, black tights so nothing showed, and a wrap-around sky-blue top. For Dorothy, she chose dangling earrings that almost transformed the voice coach into someone glamorous.

While these gifts had been wrapped—Brooke requested boxes and bows and signed the electronic box—Tara and Dorothy were tacitly realizing they both coveted Matthew, but at a distance, on screen or the stage. Up close his sexuality more or less stayed in its box and neither of them got too worked up. But with Brooke—watch what happened: His eyes brightened. His overall appearance grew dreamier and dreamier as he and Brooke drifted toward each other, and he wrapped an arm around the back of her head, his fingertips tickling her ear. And then they vanished—into mist, his tower, who knew?

Once Tara and Dorothy acknowledged this shared view, they began taking afternoon tea together, using the antique Limoges tea set Matthew had given Tara when he officially became the next James Bond. One afternoon, Dorothy spoke the obvious: “My dear, it’s the stuff of fairy tales. I’ve never seen anything like them, not even on stage.”

The promise of being on a soap opera was her friend giving her a golden ticket, despite Tara’s disinterest in acting. She only did it because her mother asked her to fill in for whichever actress fled because of Fletcher. Ultimately, however, she wanted to be a big-money movie producer and was counting on Matthew for internships.

But when Dorothy said, “This…that…yada, daba…tutor…” Tara impetuously stood up, and squealing she was so happy, hugged the woman, pulling her from her seat. Because: If Tara worked full-time on a soap opera, her employers by law must provide her with a tutor who would see to it she learned all of New York State’s tenth-grade requirements. Essentially meaning: No more high school ever, ever again!

The Port Authority bus station in New York City was filthy and in corners lay smelly bundles of rags that in fact covered a destitute and pitiful person. Making her way through the terminal, Tara fished out twenty dollar bills for the comatose and ten for those well enough to ask for “change, even a nickel…” If not for Matthew, she might have had a dollar or two to give away. But now? She handed out well over a hundred dollars before stepping outside and into a taxicab.

The driver said, “Where to?”

And then, “Here you are: Broadway and 105th. The building’s across the street.”

Elise was a large, old woman wearing a floor-length smock. Tara had heard of agents who had a reputation for being “oily.” Elise’s large yellow teeth and very wet smile prompted Tara to think of “Vaseline.” Maybe she was oily from greasing palms or having her palm greased or both.

Brooke would laugh at that—they used to laugh together all the time until Matthew butted in. Tara wanted so much to hate him or at least to torment him: A big-deal movie star twice Brooke’s age, who fell in love with her beyond all common sense, should be a total, laughable jerk. Except from the first, Matthew had looked to Tara as the ultimate voice of reason, which frankly she was. His quick, real grasp of the fact made it much harder to scoff at what an idiot he was. He had never dismissed Tara as a kid who had just turned fifteen. And if this incredibly risky thing he had gotten into was his way of fooling around, Tara’s cynicism would have snatched that up and tossed it back in his face. He hadn’t even flinched when she told him she had thoroughly and illegally checked his financial and personal history, saying instead perhaps Tara should manage one of his funds.

Still, she loved nothing better than accusing Matthew, and when she did, he nodded—guilty as charged. But then what?

If his money hadn’t changed their lives; even if he wasn’t the least bit rich, Brooke would love him just the same. But Tara and Connie? They’d consider him unsavory and scary. Yet not even Tara wasn’t steely enough to chase away a man who truly and carefully loved Brooke—as wild, heartsick, and reckless—as she was. Matthew had never seen Pop whale into her, but Brooke had told him about it. And during the summer he had suffered her fits of adolescence as if they were no trouble at all. Connie, who never seemed to notice anything, had told her so.

Elise was asking Tara if she liked coffee.

“Oh, no, thank you.”

She gave Tara papers to sign, saying, “Read the fine print.”

Tara did but Elise didn’t believe her.

“All right. Dorothy’s word was good enough for me, too.”

She gave Tara copies of the contracts and sent her to get her hair fixed, including blonde highlights; her face made up; and photographs taken. Tara’s outfit, the one Brooke had bought for her, was deemed perfect.

That afternoon, she waited in a hallway with a hundred girls, some teenagers, others older. Her name was called long after she had memorized the three-page script. Surrounded by cameras and lights, Tara became the amnesiac Sienna, slowly recovering her memory. The director, who had already received her photos and resume from Elise, took her phone number anyway and said to expect a call on Thursday.

(click here for the next episode)

Sexiest Man Alive

 

Past the security scanners, flashing lights hurled Matthew into a storm of The National Enquirer, The Globe, and The Star hawking photographs of him reaching for a grotesquely pink Brooke, chopped and pasted into clumsy nudity. His head swiveled at the headlines: JAMES BOND AND THE UNDERAGE NANNY! MATTHEW KING’S TEENAGE LOVER!

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one.)

 His own stifled scream woke him. A flight attendant named Kyle on Virgin America’s earliest flight to LAX poured him champagne. Matthew’s shaky hand raised the glass to his lips before he remembered he didn’t drink and handed it back.

Matthew hadn’t drunk alcohol since he was sixteen. Brooke was probably learning to walk then, or more likely to run. His last two years in Sedona, he had sipped ginger-ale at beer bashes and left early. Yet his teammates persisted in their belief that Matthew, their star player, was also the beer pong champion of all time.

Walking home sober, he had watched all the girls watching him, although his sister Vicky’s three most attractive girlfriends had a monopoly on him. Like Vicky, the bevy of twenty-six-year-olds had returned from their first ventures out of college and away from Sedona, frustrated and unsure what to do next. Unlike Vicky, her friends scarcely recognized adorable little Matthew, who was now six feet, four (and then five) inches tall and more adorable than ever—connotation serious.

Unsurprisingly, sixteen-year-old Matthew proved inexhaustibly keen to please his sister’s girlfriends—no strings attached. However, Vicky’s annoyance hovered in the air like smoke, and she screamed at him when her girlfriends called to say Matthew was “great in bed.”

“Why are you angry at me and not them?”

The question prompted her to inform their mother, who ranked casual sex on the same level as drunken rage.

Matthew honestly didn’t understand the problem. He wasn’t stealing Vicky’s friends, if that worried them. Her girlfriends liked him just for sex.

Of course, he knew his mother Sylvia hated “just sex.” But Vicky? Deeply asleep on his flight to L.A., he tiptoed through shadowy animosities that remained unnamed. At some point, Vicky had married a man Matthew didn’t remember. But in his dream, he saw her weeping and miserable because her college professor had decided against divorcing his wife. The dream ended with a plan for Vicky to go on family vacation with them—him and Brooke, Dex and Ivy—except…eighteen wasn’t enough for his sister. So he invited her when Brooke had turned twenty-one and finished college. Vicky’s “no thank you” sounded as Kyle woke him inside the empty jet.

At the Chateau Marmont, Matthew drank a smoothie and worked out in the gym. He showered and shaved and met Gretta in the salon where he showed her several artists’ renditions of James Bond. These inspired her to cut his loose curls short except for those in front, one of which she shaped to fall onto his forehead like a comma. She rinsed his hair with a darkening solution that she said wasn’t a dye or henna—something subtle and new. It would keep his hair glossy for months. Before he left, she gave him styling “balm not gel,” so the comma would never fall flat.

Wearing tailor-made trousers and a soft blue shirt, he met Jeffery in the restaurant, who hugged him and said, “My, my, my. I mean, Matthew…and I was prepared.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you get my text? You’re the ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ and now that I see you, People magazine owes me. Ten a.m. tomorrow; at their headquarters for photos. You’re their fourth James Bond, and hands-down their best SMA ever.”

“Jeffery, thank you. And I hope Eon has thanked you too.”

“They have indeed. They got right back to me, unlike some people…”

“Sorry, I haven’t been in touch. My kids have preoccupied me all summer.”

“Apology unnecessary,” Jeffery said, “but appreciated.”

Matthew closed his menu and ordered poached sole, salad, iced tea, and extra lemon wedges. Jeffery wasn’t going to eat at three in the afternoon but when the waiter brought the bread, he ordered a hamburger and a beer.

“You’ve been getting incredible reports, honey. Sung who’s important in the industry—so much so that his word is gold—especially within the franchise, says you have the potential to become a true Taekwondo master. And your voice, really your whole performance, in that play, impressed everyone who saw it. The praise has been snowballing.” Jeffery’s beer arrived and swallowing half, he held up a finger, ordering another. “Why didn’t you tell me such big names were interested?”

Matthew grinned. “Told you it would be fun. Any reaction to Hamlet in Central Park?”

“Well, the writers couldn’t believe they had overlooked that. So yes, they’re working on it.” Jeffery ate his hamburger and French fries fast.

Matthew wanted to be home; he wanted a fight choreographer if Sung did; and he wanted people to know Hamlet was Brooke’s idea—she’d written the notes, not Mark Fletcher. Those who remembered him, Jeffery said, had identified his style immediately.

 Squeezing lemon over his food, Matthew said, “So, tomorrow after the photo shoot and a meeting or two, can I take the red-eye home?”

“I don’t think so, honey. One, you need to show more interest here. And two, they want a chemistry-check with you and the Bond girls.”

“Chemistry-check?” Matthew straightened his shoulders, clowning.

“Your chemistry isn’t in doubt. Eon just wants your say-so on the actresses.”

“So, just tell them I say so.”

“Honey, a little footage and you’re balking? I can’t believe it! No private jet; no bungalow, but you can’t make love to Charelle and Kim-Jo for the camera?”

“You’re right; I’m sorry,” He raised his fork, using hunger as an excuse. “This summer I spent enough time with my kids so that leaving them feels terrible.”

Jeffrey lifted his beer. “Find them a stepmother.”

Matthew pulled a punch to his agent’s shoulder. “Maybe when I’m less busy. But because of them, I could use tighter control. Something like George has.”

“You mean something like James Bond has? Honey, if you’re hiding an embarrassing secret, you better tell me.”

Matthew was wondering if he should consult Fletcher about the James Bond ethos. The director had trained him to use his anxiety to suggest a fiery longing running beneath his nonchalance. This worked well in real life and great on the stage, but it ran contrary to Bond’s character.

Jeffery loved the comma of hair, by the way. “As will the aficionados.”

Yet he was certain his one actor with no vices had discovered one. “Honey, please tell me what the problem is and we’ll fix it.”

But Matthew claimed his enthusiasm-deficit stemmed from jet-lag and low blood sugar—both alleviated by lunch. Further, if he were near a spotlight, never fear—he would be the consummate James Bond, regardless.

To prove it, he phoned Barbara from their table, confirming their date tonight, which Jeffery had arranged an hour after Matthew had phoned in the silly Hamlet business.

He was talking to her assistant, another man named Kyle, who yelled how fortunate that Barbara happened to be in L.A.! More marvelous, really, was her decision to postpone her other engagements tonight in order to go dancing. He took Matthew’s number, despite having it on speed dial.

Almost cocktail hour, Jeffery ordered a gin and tonic while Matthew asked for cookies and Earl Grey, which was steeping when his phone vibrated. Barbara gave him the address of a private club and hoped Matthew liked ballroom dancing.

“A new pleasure for me, Barbara, but I’ve no doubt you’ll make us look great together.” (Actually, Matthew took dance classes whenever possible, ballroom dancing being the latest.)

After he hung up, Jeffery said, “Feel free to discuss that Hamlet thing with her. It’s a done deal, because of her fond adventures with you in Central Park.”

“So they’ll send a fight choreographer?”

“For ten days but then you and Lars—Otto—will film the scene at the Brooklyn Museum. But sword play is difficult. And after your jump-start in the Catskills, Sung will practice fencing with you every day.”

Alone in his room, Matthew decided to wear the same clothes tonight with Barbara. The day Jeffery didn’t swoon over him, Matthew should count his teeth, but ever since he’d arrived he’d noticed lingering glances everywhere. Barbara, People magazine, and the Bond girls would be extremely happy with him.

His angel Brooke would not. He’d get home two days later than he’d promised, when spending the week with her, after her miscarriage, was his sole reason for flying to L.A. Matthew wished more than anything he could call her up—if only to hear Brooke throw the phone when she learned he was delayed.

(click here for the next episode)

Thief in the Night

The final play performance—free to police and other civic workers—had sold out like the   others. The cast party at the Gallery would run past midnight. Matthew was still leaving in the morning, except instead of going to film Readiness Is All; he would fly to L.A. and return sometime on Tuesday.

(click here for the first episode and here for the previous one.)

He and Brooke were years away from being free to go anywhere beyond Matthew’s Woodstock compound, but, promising her they would have next week together, he danced her around the tower, singing old torch songs with lyrics he made up on the spot about Brooke.

 Whenever he touched her he imagined more of the physical trauma and loss she suffered. Yet he was incapable of comforting her without struggling against his desire. She suggested that tonight after the play, he could kiss her between her legs, an intimacy they both loved.

After his run, after Taekwondo, he checked The Gallery’s computer, found the username “Horatio” (which apparently she had used to learn when she was most fertile), and read several bold-faced warnings against sexual activity too soon after miscarriage. “Sexual activity,” however, was left to the imagination and he found nothing indicating that his tongue would hurt her.

When he asked Brooke’s opinion, she insisted his tongue was, if anything, necessary to her recovery. He said, “Let’s wait and see how you feel.”

Late that afternoon, they lay side by side in the sunroom. He was cradling her head and urging her to use her new credit card (backed by his Swiss bank account) to buy a new bicycle—the best—when Connie called her to the sewing room. Brooke kissed him before standing up and staggering backwards. “Was it really only yesterday?” she whispered.

He nodded, as struck as she was by the chasm between then and now.

Her mother had remade the blue dress. Brooke looked in the three-way mirror and her eyes brimmed. But Connie had retrieved her kitten heels and bought new blue nail polish. The dress looked exactly as it had yesterday morning when Brooke was pregnant. And now? She turned so Connie could see. She looked no different.

Standing among the mirrors upset her, but she thanked her mother, who had sincerely tried to put things back as they had been.

Matthew waited under the stairwell until he heard Brooke’s silvery shoes tapping the floor and saw the blue fabric flowing above her knee caps. When she was anxious, she liked him to “hold her together as hard as he could.” He crushed her tightly and stroked her hair, saying “All night if you want, Brooke. Unless there’s a reason not to.”

When it was time, he drove Tara and Fletcher to the Playhouse. Connie took Brooke in the Prius and said, “You’re so beautiful I can’t believe you’re my daughter.”

In the third row center, she sat next to Fletcher, who was wearing sunglasses just as Tara had said he did during the entire Benefit performance.

“Sir Fletcher, I would have worn my Chanels if I knew you were wearing—what are those?”

“Persol’s Steven McQueen collection.”

“Oh? May I try on your Steve McQueen’s?”

“He was an actor, not a designer. Don’t wreck them.” Fletcher took off his sunglasses and was showing her how the plastic frames folded in half and in half again when Brooke’s father sat on the other side of her. 

She whispered, “Uh-oh, maybe later,” and handed back Fletcher’s sunglasses.

Without saying hello, her father grabbed Brooke’s neck and shook her hard. “You look like a damn tart.”

“Mama made this dress for me, Pop.”

He was grumbling about her being co-playwright with Jason Astley when Fletcher leaned behind Brooke’s seat and yanked Jimmy’s collar until it ripped. “Shut your stupid face. Abominable is closer to me than to Astley.”

Brooke’s father didn’t believe it.

“Go fuck your miscreant self,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher insulting Pop, who seemed to take it in stride, as if they were drinking buddies, seemed odd. The fact that he and Pop knew the other existed—seemed odd.

At intermission Brooke ran to the restroom and found someone’s old sweater to wrap around her waist, because despite taping a “pad with wings” inside her underwear, an overflow of blood—showed you what the midwife knew—had stained her second blue dress. She walked half a mile to the A-frame, where she cried for two or three minutes, no more, because she should have known.

Matthew guessed why Brooke was no longer sitting in the audience. When he wanted to skip the cast party, Tara said “And where do you suppose people will think you’ve gone, Mr. Mayor?”

Fletcher skidded over, drinking champagne and showing off his Persols. “I’d be jealous, too, Terrible, if the gloriously gorgeous Abominable were my sister.”

“You might be, but I’m not.”

Driving Fletcher home early, Matthew said, “Don’t say anything about jealousy to Tara. It was never a problem before.”

“Before whom? You.”

“With any luck, I’ll see you next week.”

“If not, though, Bond, never fear. Your angel and I are going to accomplish great things.”

“Fletcher, would you rent a PO Box in your name and help us exchange letters?”

“I shall be quite honored, Bond. It sounds supercalifra—oh you know.”

Tara was still enjoying the cast party so Matthew waited to drive her to the farmhouse where he asked her to call the A-frame.

“Leave her alone, Matthew. After next week, she’ll have nothing but memories.”

“No reason I can’t phone.”

“Stop,” Tara said. She let it ring and ring. The voicemail wasn’t working. Starting upstairs, she said, “Don’t even think of going there. It’s too risky.”

But Matthew risked everything all the time. In running clothes, he sprinted onto Route 212. In town, the neighbors facing the Logan’s had their lights on. So instead of Brooke’s doorbell, he tossed pebbles against the back windows. A police car pulled behind him on the grass, lights flashing. Climbing from the car, a policeman shone a flashlight in Matthew’s face. “Mr. King, The Mayor of London, what’s up?”

Chagrined, Matthew acted affable but embarrassed. “Unexpected meeting in L.A., Officer. I’m looking for Connie to babysit.”

“She’s probably at Chase’s. You know Chase?” The policeman offered to drive him there.

“Thank you, but I’d rather tell my agent he has to wait.”

“Well, let me drive you home.”

“Thanks again, sir,” Matthew said, “but I’ll jog back.” He ran in that direction until the police car left. This time one pebble brought Brooke giggling to the window, and then outside in a T-shirt but no bra and no shoes.

He led her into tall grass and pulled her to the ground. Together they whispered awhile before making out like teenagers, which of course Brooke was. So badly did Matthew want her in his bed that he carried her piggyback two miles to the farmhouse, stopping twice to rest.

Beneath the skylight, Brooke fell instantly asleep and when she woke, he was gone.

(click here to read the next episode) 

The Fall of a Sparrow

Matthew ran downstairs, and then upstairs with arnica oil, which he applied with his gentlest touch to the purple-black swatch covering Brooke’s lower back. Then he shed the Mayor’s suit-jacket on the couch and they held each other. Her lips lingered against his neck, which pulsed hard. Without prompting, she climbed onto his lap and God forgive him if all his remorse failed to lessen his lust one bit. Yet what he needed most was to convey how sorry he was. 

(click here for the first episode and here for the previous one.)

“I should have been with you.”

“If you weren’t on stage, where you were supposed to be, I’d have murdered you.”

He shook his head. “I got you pregnant and you’re still a girl.”

Love, anger, and sorrow raced through her. He’d be gone in two days but her anger won and she jumped up furious. “Still a girl!’ Why not, just a girl? Why not a big dumb puppy?”

(What? Oh, maybe—puppy love.) “No, Brooke. You know that’s not it. But I’m leaving when just we’re beginning.”

“Just beginning and I don’t know shit.”

He shook his head. “You suffered a miscarriage because of me.”

“No, you self-centered shit-head! It was a bus!”

Outraged, she stood over him while he sat contrite on the couch. Head in his hands, he spoke to the floor, his trained voice rising to a mournful plea. “Brooke, if I return from this movie and your life has changed, I’ll wait. I’ll stay out of your way but I’ll wait and keep waiting until you’re ready for me.”

Arms crossed, she shook her head. “Try again.”

“Please, don’t make this a quiz. What I did was wrong. I traumatized you in ways you may not realize for years.”

“You think so? Of course, you do! How could a big fucking shit like you not traumatize me my whole goddman life!” She drew her arm back and he watched without blinking as she slapped his face as hard as she could. When he didn’t respond, she moved to the window sill and as she did, he stared at the backs of her naked legs beneath her T-shirt. Luckily, she didn’t see this.

Anger had overwhelmed her sorrow and exhaustion—gone was the pallor from her complexion. “Imagine if we hadn’t had this summer, because you were too scared of my ‘teenage innocence.’”

He closed his eyes and listened to her tapping her bare foot. He lifted his head and the dark concern in his eyes startled her. “My emotional life began with you, Brooke. If I’m too serious and too protective, I can’t help it.”

Why this absolved him, he couldn’t guess. But Brooke flew across the room to him. She wept on his shirt (The Mayor’s shirt).

He should shower. They should eat and then sleep. He lifted the smoky quartz pendant from between her breasts. Even after it fell back against her green T-shirt, the hundred carats cast a surreal twilight, filling the room with an illusory permanence as if the sun and moon on opposite horizons had come to rest in perfect balance.

Matthew wore pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt, his hair still wet from the shower. They ate bread, tomato slices, cheese, and fruit.

He said, “What if I stay with you another week? That’s how long I stayed with my sister after our mother died.”

“You can’t delay the movie for no reason.”

“We’re sad, Brooke. We need at least a week. I’ll talk to Jeffrey.” He leaned across the table. “What were you doing when I came in? Tell me about the so-great scene you wrote for Readiness Is All.”

“It’s nothing.” But she wandered around the room, eating grapes. “Last summer—Fletcher was out of his mind—we did Hamlet and hired a fight choreographer. The rapier scene was so cool. So I wrote this thing where you chase Otto, the depraved archeologist, through Central Park onto the open air stage—The Delacorte Theater. The play director, who’s in league with Otto and the guys plotting universal destruction, hands him special tunics on the run. Otto gives you the chemically treated tunic and together you overwhelm Hamlet and Laertes in mid-duel. The director yells at the audience to remain seated, while you and Otto cross swords. You hit his shoulder and he runs off. You’re right on his heels—but only after tearing off the tunic—which bursts into flames sending the audience screaming into the night.”

He grinned. “Brooke, that’s so great! That’ll definitely give us another week. I’ll call Jeffery.”

“No, don’t, Matthew. I was fooling around.” She yawned and he followed her upstairs where she dropped onto the bed, asleep within seconds. All night he watched his marvelous girl sleep in his arms, her hair spread across his chest, and his mind shed the anxiety that had wracked him all summer. In its stead came elation mixed with acute wariness.

Before Taekwondo, he checked his voicemail. Jeffrey said the schedule had been pushed back—the electrician’s union. “So you’ve been ignoring me, honey. Get out here. I’ve arranged things.”

 

Dex and Ivy’s swimming lessons had ended before the play’s previews, when the mornings were no longer warm. By midday, when Brooke finally left the tower, it was warm in the sun; cool in the shade. Dex was rolling a soccer ball near the garage.

“Remember that kid Kevin? He invited me to his house. His mother’s coming to get me, because she wants to see this place.”

“If anyone makes you feel weird, Dex, because your house is huge or your father’s a rich movie star, tell them to shut up. Everybody’s got a different family.”

He sidled next to Brooke and she hugged him and smoothed his hair. “Always tell me what’s happening, Dex.”

He promised and called to her as she ran to the farmhouse. “I heard about your bicycle. Are you getting it fixed?”

She skipped backwards, calling, “Oh yeah. Wait till the leaves change. You’ll love it.”

In the kitchen, Tara hugged her and said, “I was so worried I almost puked.”

They ate cereal in the dining room. “It was awful, Tara. If I forget about it, I’m fine. Otherwise…”

“Yeah, but Brooke, overall, it’s for the better.”

“Tara, you don’t know shit. Your little homilies make it worse. Except it’s already the worst.”

Tara said she was sorry.

“Well then, stop it.”

In the first-floor bathroom Brooke changed into her new bathing suit, the one she swore she’d never wear, but so what? She wanted something new.

She found Connie and Ivy coming from the garden. “How are you, honey?” Her mother held Brooke’s wrist and studied her face. “Inside and out?”

“I’m fine, Mama.”

Ivy blew her a kiss and Brooke ran through the meadow to the waterfall. She teetered at the height—but she had once never lost her nerve. Shivering, she jack-knifed, missing the sweet spot and scraping her forehead. After gliding through the tunnel to the secluded pond, she lay dazed in sunshine. When she opened her eyes, Matthew was standing over her.

Not a dream—he’d found her. He knelt in the sodden grass so his hands could move over her, his eyes glittering. “Jesus, Brooke.”

“Jesus, Matthew.”

He laughed. “You look unreal. Not even in my dreams…”

She rolled onto her side, drops of water trickling from the bathing suit onto her waist. “Too much?”

He shouldn’t say anything. He had no right, but he’d give up a lot to see her stand up; the bathing suit had an oval cut-out from her ribs to just above the hip bone. He gestured at her forehead. “What happened here?”

“Incorrect dive.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Tonight after the play, maybe you can kiss it.”

He smiled, uncertain if she needed to heal—and rest—so soon after her miscarriage. “To get us another week, Brooke, I’m flying to L.A. tomorrow, after tonight’s play. But after that, I promise, we’ll have a week.”

He didn’t mention pitching her Hamlet scene, because who knew? Although he had described it to Sung during Taekwondo, who said, “We must.” Sung, who—no surprise—was a fencing master, had said he and the director were friends. “When I tell Harold, he’ll insist.”

(click here for the next episode)

Stormy Weather

Whatever had happened must be disastrous. The Benefit was Brooke’s chance for recognition. Her presence should have enlivened the night. Yet Matthew had no intimations. Her  every pleasure was his; her every pain was his. So why didn’t he know?

Because—he hadn’t the courage.

(click here for the first episode and here for the previous one.)

The curtain opened and out of necessity he assumed Connie had rescued her. Out of necessity, he assumed Brooke was fine or  would be soon.

From above, the crew drops metal beads on plastic sheets and shakes them, creating torrential sounds. The Mayor in a bespoke suit paces his glass office.

The Mayor (to himself): Why do you haunt me? You appear in the lightning, dispersing the gloom, which instantly returns.

A City Minister (enters right): Are the phones working? I thought you were talking to someone.

The Mayor: No. Go home; everyone else has. I’ll be here tomorrow.

The Minister exits. Lightning strikes upstage. The Mayor returns to the window and moves center.

The Mayor (in distress):This isn’t my fault but I’ll be blamed. (Matthew improvises: peering into the audience.) Are you all right? Let me know if you’re here. (He shakes his head.) I’m losing my mind.

He sits at his desk. A crack of lightning hits.

The Mayor (jumps from his chair to stare outside): Natasha, don’t do this.

He retrieves a bottle of scotch from his desk and pours a short glass.

The Mayor (downs the liquor, pours more): I’ll be blamed and charged.

Lucinda [Tara] enters, sits on the couch, dumps water from her rubber boots, and rolls onto her side.

Lucinda: Hello, Father. Will you fix me what you’re having?

The Mayor: You’re too young, yet I must oblige. (Distracted, he pours her a glass of scotch.) Why aren’t you at school?

Lucinda (drinks and swirls the liquor): Semester break. I’ve been taking buses for days. Weren’t you worried?

The Mayor: I should have been. I should have worried more about you and less about everything else.

At intermission, Fletcher grabbed Matthew’s elbow and hissed in his ear. “How dare you break the bloody fourth wall! ‘Are you all right, Abominable? Let me know if you’re here.’ Wherever she is, if you ruin her play, she’ll never forgive you.”

(In Act Two, The Mayor witnesses the ghost of Natasha in three more lightning flashes.)

The Mayor: Natasha, whatever I did, I’m sorry.

Lucinda: Father, people are angry about the storm, but you’ve gone lunatic.

The Mayor: Natash—er—Lucinda, all month I’ve seen shadows, tricks of light. I’ve scarcely slept for the encroaching damp and consequent rot.

Curtain.

(In the final Act, The Mayor lifts his head from his desk.)

The Mayor: Daylight breaks!

Having spotted Connie in the wings, Matthew raced beside her. “Is she all right?”

“She’ll be fine.” Connie hugged Tara, who had appeared out of nowhere. “Perfectly fine.”

Tara returned to the stage, but Matthew hung back, asking for details.

“We’ll talk on the way home.”

After bowing with Astley and Fletcher, Tara pulled Matthew on stage. Three full curtain calls: bowing with Fletcher; bowing between Fletcher and Astley. And then Fletcher motioning for quiet and offering laudatory remarks about the brilliant young playwright, also his assistant director, Brooke Logan, who couldn’t be here tonight.

After that Matthew told the others: no more curtain calls. With no intention of removing his costume, he waited for Connie while she told Tara, “Brooke had a bad menstrual thing.”

“Oh,” Tara said. “All right if I hang around here?”

Connie nodded.

Outside, she and Matthew gazed at the throng of wealthy, powerful people milling around a hundred cars or more. Matthew had parked in the CVS lot. After The Playhouse lights fell away, she held his sleeve until they stepped onto the sidewalk.

“Brooke suffered a chemical miscarriage.”

“What?” Matthew needed to know. “Chemical?”

“It’s an early miscarriage, before an ultrasound, and less physically complicated. She doesn’t need a DNC.”

He recalled the term: dilate and curette?…cure…scraping the uterus…and suppressed most of a groan. “Has she seen a doctor?”

“Midwife.”

“Can you make sure she sees a doctor?”

“There’s no emergency, Matthew. After you leave, she’ll have a thorough check-up.”

They found his car, which was ticketed. His hand trembled unlocking Connie’s door and then his own. Before starting the ignition, he held the steering wheel and let his head drop.

“Connie, I—I’m sorry. Did you know this could happen?”

“Oh yes. And Brooke knows I know.”

“You said she’s fine physically. How is she emotionally?”

“Not good. Don’t tell her I said this, but nobody in the world could have talked her out of this pregnancy.”

“I know how bad I am, Connie. I do.”

“Matthew? It’s obvious you love her.”

“I should have waited.”

“But she wouldn’t,” Connie said. “We both know that.”

He laughed in misery. “I’m not making excuses. I was wrong. But I begged her to marry me first. You probably don’t believe that. But Brooke wanted a baby, not a wedding.”

“If I didn’t believe you, I’d have stopped you. But you love Brooke more than any man—any person—has ever loved me or ever will.”

Sighing, he started the car and produced a low whistle. “Few mothers would wish that for their teenage daughter.”

“I didn’t wish it,” Connie said. “But I would never deny or disrupt it, either. Right now Brooke is grieving. What you do next will really affect her. And in her grief, she might be wild.”

“I interfered,” he said. “It’s my fault; I realize the harm I’ve caused has only begun. But I love her more than I thought possible. And now—I would do anything not to have hurt her like this.”

“Brooke and Tara are exceptional,” Connie said. “Have you ever known such confident, capable girls? I’ve known teenage boys who thought they had the whole world figured out. It’s such a short phase, but few girls, at least that I’ve seen, get to experience it like Brooke and Tara. Of course, everyone, including my daughters, pays for dreaming.”

Matthew parked the car in front of the farmhouse but didn’t unfasten his seatbelt. If he only could find the right words…

“We should go in,” Connie said. “Brooke’s waiting in your office.”

 

Inside the tower, in the second floor’s kitchen area, she drank a liter of water, because she couldn’t eat yet. Matthew hadn’t recognized the movie title as a line from Hamlet—Brooke had to tell him. They probably chose—Readiness Is All—because the villain is Danish, a disgruntled archeologist with a personal vendetta against James Bond.

While waiting for him, she surprised herself by writing a scene for the movie—one she thought was so great.

She hadn’t heard him running upstairs. Still made up like The Mayor, Matthew stood in the room, confused. He saw her thumbing a paperback of Hamlet. Was that good or bad?

When she looked up, she smiled an absolutely heartbroken, heartbreaking smile. A heartbroken mother. A heartbreaking child.

He sat at the table and held her hands, staring into her eyes, red from crying and dark from pain. She told him about the bus and stood up to show him the bruise across her lower back.

(click here for the next episode)

Blood

Brooke missed the whole Benefit because she had bicycled to CVS for glittery blue nail polish to show off her new dress and the silvery, open-toed kitten heels she had bought when shopping with Dorothy and Tara. She had also chosen a bathing suit on sale. The black one-piece looked ordinary on the manikin. But trying it on, she had asked Dorothy if it was too low-cut.

(click here for the first episode and here for the previous one.)

“Not for you, dear.”

Tara, who was trying on a pair of orange suede wedges had shrugged, without looking.

That Wednesday in the early, early morning (dress rehearsal night) she had stopped at the A-frame. In Connie’s bedroom, she put on the bathing suit and practiced walking in the kitten heels, using her mother’s full-length mirror. And God damn her—if she ever wore that bathing suit outside.

Although, if her breasts rivaled those in men’s magazines because she was pregnant, not because she was a born siren, in a month or two nobody would stare at her with lust or envy—more like righteous indignation. (“Preggers, Brooke? How’d that happen?”)

On Wednesday morning, though, her stomach was flatter than ever. Walking in the kitten heels made her feel sexy, while the bathing suit, which seemed to offer her breasts like twin cupcakes begging to be licked, was a bit much—why hadn’t they told her so when she asked? She rested her fingers on the bones near her hips, just below the bathing suit’s emphatic cut-outs curving in toward her waist on both sides. And turned around to see how she looked from the back.

Then she almost screamed. “Tara! What the—? What are you doing here?”

“Getting my external hard-drive. What are you doing, Brooke?”

“You told me this bathing suit looked okay on me.”

“Sure. Wear it to the Benefit on Saturday. And forget the play—you’re the show.”

“Shut up! What about my shoes?”

She walked across the room and back.

“They’re rated G, Brooke, until you walk in them.” She flopped back onto Connie’s bed. “And who more than you needs a huge booster shot of sexiness?”

“Tara, don’t be like that. You’re much prettier than me.”

“What you’ve got, Brooke, is so far beyond ‘pretty’ I can’t believe you’d say that to me.”

Used to be, Tara wasn’t jealous of her. She liked being the pretty, level-headed sister, and probably still did. But now everything about her irked Tara. Same as Pop: Brooke was a plague upon the earth. When really she was as good as Tara in different ways.

That’s what Brooke was thinking when a supersized bus had hurdled out of nowhere around the road’s tightest curve. Usually, Brooke and her bicycle could fly over ditches but she wasn’t paying attention.

Up in the air, off the bike, she instinctively rolled up, protecting her head and stomach. Her lower back hit a rock hard. Her dress had flipped over her head. But no bones broke and the bicycle still worked, sort of.

When she got home, Brooke looked in Connie’s mirror. Her shoulder was scraped and when she lifted her dress, a bruise like a wide belt was blossoming across the back of her pelvis. She washed her face and feet. Her lower back tingled in painful spasms. She squatted over a newspaper and painted her big toenails. Deep inside, nowhere near the bruise, sharp stabs pulsed, so searing that her eyes blurred with tears. Adding a second coat, she screamed at the red puddle spreading beneath her. Curled on the floor, she cried out-loud as the knives inside her cut harder, deeper, and faster—for hours. A clumpy red pool saturated everything.

When Brooke didn’t show up for the Benefit, Connie rode Dorothy’s bicycle to the A-frame. Even from the front yard, she heard her daughter screaming. Rounding the stairs, seeing blue nail polish spilled on the rug and then Brooke curled on the floor in a pool of blood, Connie panicked. Stepping closer, she saw bloody towels, two of them twisted below Brooke’s waist, and realized the blood was menstrual.

She got down on the floor and dabbed Brooke’s tears with a tissue. “I know you feel like you’re  dying, honey. But you’ll be okay.” Connie stroked her hair, which was damp with sweat and sticky with the warm blood surrounding her. Brooke raised her arms and Connie hugged her. “Oh God,” Brooke gasped. “When does it stop?”

Connie almost offered her daughter ice packs for the cramps but Brooke’s teeth were chattering. When the spasm subsided, Brooke said, “Mama, look.” Connie’s green satin Benefit dress was stained red.

“Don’t worry. Do you think you can sit in a warm bath or should I just get dry towels and fresh blankets?”

“Just hold me, Mama.” She did for several minutes but needed to remove Brooke from this mess even if there was more to come. “Does it still feel like stabs or is it winding down to cramps?”

“I don’t know, Mama.”

“Brooke, honey, I know the pain is terrible, but you’ll be fine if we let nature run its course.”

She turned her head and grinned at her mother. Connie was always saying, “Let nature run its course.” It was an all-purpose answer that Brooke and Tara had teased her about since they were little.

“I love you, Mama,” Brooke said, and shuddered in Connie’s arms as another bout of searing pain released a fresh stream of blood. After a minute, though, Brooke hiccupped instead of sobbing. She pulled off the soggy towels to show Connie the bruise.

“No wonder you’re freezing. Let’s get you into a warm bath.”

“No, don’t leave.”

“I’ll talk to you while the water runs.” The faucet started with a thin cold trickle that gradually brought a steady flow of warm water.

“Do you think you cracked a bone, honey? When you fell on your back?”

“No, the fall just knocked my insides out.”

Connie half-urged, half-carried her daughter to the tub, which was warm and deep. Brooke stopped shivering and Connie closed the toilet lid, sat, and lit a joint. After a long, hungry inhale, she handed the joint to her daughter. “Don’t pretend you’ve never smoked it. Sometimes it helps.”

Brooke toked until she noticed bloody clumps and clots settling like a cushion. She shrieked, and getting out of the tub, threw the joint in the water. Connie found more towels and wrapped her in one on top of the other.

“It’s all right, Brooke. Just unusually heavy for the season.”

Brooke looked directly at her mother, grateful for her extremely tactful way of saying the obvious.

After she had settled Brooke in bed with a super-absorbent pad and white cotton panties borrowed from Tara (all Brooke’s underpants were sheer bikinis), Connie lit a fresh joint. “Will you let me comb your hair? I’ll stop if it hurts.”

Connie found a wide-toothed, wooden comb and a basin of warm water. They passed the joint back and forth.

“That feels sweet, Mama. Like when I was little.”

“If you’re steady enough to sit in bed a few minutes, I’ll make tea and call Maggie.” Maggie was the mid-wife.

It was another hour or more before scrawny Maggie arrived. During that time, Connie had changed Brooke’s pad twice. But when Maggie checked, Brooke was relatively dry.

She preferred examining patients in private and asked Connie to please step into the other room. “Oh, of course,” Connie said. “Brooke, honey? I really should get back to the Playhouse.”

Brooke wanted her mother to stay with her. But Connie had changed into a striped dress and was inching toward the front door. “Everyone’s so worried about you, sweetheart—so worried.”

Brooke almost begged her not to go. But Connie said, “I’ll tell them a mishap caused you to miss the Benefit.”

“Okay, Mama.” Brooke turned her head so Connie wouldn’t see her tears, because she wasn’t crying in pain, more like a baby.

“One last thing,” Connie addressed Maggie where Brooke could hear her. “I don’t want Brooke to be alone. So unless you decide she needs the hospital, would you mind driving her to Matthew King’s place? Jenna’s watching his children. It could be hours before I get my car out of the parking lot.”

Brooke’s miscarriage had lasted six or seven hours. “Which is nothing,” Maggie said, “so stop crying.” She shone a light and using her gruesome implements, told Brooke, “Looks like nature did its job. You’re clean as a whistle up there.”

“Can I get dressed? Will you take me to Jenna?”

“It’s part of my job,” Maggie said. “But don’t dawdle. I’m in a hurry.”

Brooke dressed in a long sleeved green T-shirt and loose jeans. She packed extra pads, a book, and a notebook.

Driving to the farm, Maggie lectured her about birth control pills.

Brooke thought about writing Connie a note. But—why spell it out? Connie saw everything Tara did, but kept it to herself.

In Matthew’s office, too upset to sleep, Brooke vowed not to cry in front of him. Losing the baby was the saddest thing that ever happened to her. But Matthew hadn’t wanted a baby. Nobody did—except her.

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The Missing Girlfriend

Every performance, including the dress rehearsal, sold out. Several people opted to pay Benefit-price for preview seats, so Connie arranged an exclusive after-show party with Matthew and Fletcher at Violette, the restaurant catering the Benefit. In all the excitement, Brooke disguised her dread at being separated from Matthew. She rushed around in girlish gaiety, which amused but didn’t fool him. Next Monday he began filming in New York City, but effectively, they would be worlds apart.

(click here for the first episode and here for the previous one.)

 Matthew was determined to love and protect her, absent or not. But the problem of being cut off from her gnawed at him. They couldn’t talk on the phone—too easily hacked. Possibly they could write letters using pseudonyms and go-betweens. He broached the idea to Fletcher who oddly mentioned it to Sung—whose indirect response was nonetheless clear: Best to move forward.

Fine by Brooke. She wanted Matthew to think she had understood all the injunctions keeping them apart when she had insisted he play James Bond. But she hadn’t known how much it would hurt—and he hadn’t even left yet! By now, of course, she should be used to emotional extremes. All her life she had felt condemnation from some people as well as their delight whenever she lost—finally, crazy, extravagant Brooke getting her just deserts. How many young women throughout history were written off because their excessive sentiment provoked the authorities?

Imagine the gossip six months from now! Teenage mothers might be despised, but she assumed they were rarely beaten. Their babies needed them. Shit—was Brooke actually supposing a newborn baby would force people to back off? Not for anything would she think that way. She would never use a child. She wanted a baby because she loved the father. She was capable and smart and hadn’t gone into this thoughtlessly. Also, the gossips should know: She and her child would never live off taxpayers. Well, one taxpayer, but he wouldn’t see it like that in a million years. Naturally, she’d suffer, being a teenage mother—father unknown. There would be things she’d miss. But there would also be once in a lifetime experiences that could only happen now.

She rode her bicycle rather than ride in Connie’s Prius. She wasn’t allowed to ride with Matthew, who drove Tara and Fletcher. For the previews, Brooke wore her white dress with long sleeves. The cobalt-blue dress was reserved for the Benefit. Before Connie had even finished it, Tara said Brooke looked “spectacular”—meaning she was jealous. Of course, if Tara wanted a halter-neck dress, Connie would make one for her too. But Tara had complained that “spectacular” on Brooke would look like a mistake on her. (“All right, Tara, but life’s unfair.” No need to say that out-loud, however.)

At the previews, possibly to keep her away from Matthew, Fletcher stuck by Brooke’s side. She complimented his sobriety and he corrected her, “Restraint, Abominable. Cold sober, I’d be a wreck.” Jason Astley attempted a few stammering words, and Brooke couldn’t thank him enough for naming her co-playwright.

On Saturday, the night of the Benefit, the weather was especially mild; the moon almost full. Twenty little tables with chairs were set on the theater’s lawn. Glass lanterns on tall poles illuminated the fete and strands of little round lights outlined paths in the grass. A striped tent contained the cash bar. Volunteers in tuxedoes served round after round of ever-changing hors d’oeuvres.

Shoulder to shoulder with Mark Fletcher, grandee of the recent past, and Jason Astley in tweed blazer and ill-fitting slacks, Matthew watched a receiving line form: Sam, Michael, Catherine, Sarah, Tom, David, Robert, and hundreds more. Men shook his hand and clapped his back. Women air-kissed his cheek. Everyone asked about the James Bond movie. Harold Sands was directing, no? They thought the title, Readiness Is All, was shrewd. A few showed their schooling by adding, “Since no man, of aught he leaves…”

Matthew laughed, “Well done,” and asked, did they know Mark Fletcher?

Of course, they did. Despite Fletcher’s chain-smoking, he too received handshakes and air kisses. People who had never heard of him nodded in appreciation anyway. Several mentioned a theatrical production he directed decades ago. Almost nobody knew Jason Astley, who said his half of the play was political while his “girlfriend” Brooke had written the personal stuff.

When Fletcher stepped aside with Oskar and George, Matthew nodded at Jason. “The political and personal, an excellent way to put it. Where is your girlfriend, though, Jason? Shouldn’t she be here?”

“She’s probably rescuing wildlife or something,” he said. “That’s the way Brooke is.”

The two dozen or so people that neither Matthew nor Fletcher knew were silent backers, including Jason’s parents. But like Matthew, Mr. and Mrs. Astley wondered where was Jason’s girlfriend? The last time they had seen little Brooke, she was twelve.

“She was thirteen,” Jason said. “Now she’s almost seventeen.”

Fletcher extended his cigarette toward Matthew, indicating, “enjoy the irony; beware of grimacing.” Matthew was far too worried for grimacing. He concentrated on projecting urbane smoothness. Earlier that day, he had been watching Goldfinger with Dex and Tara when Brooke had dashed into the room, whispering good news. He paid more attention to her voice than to what she saying. But what quickened his pulse was that she had stopped hiding the smoky quartz necklace he had given her. In fact, as she leaned over him from behind the couch, the pendant dropped onto his collarbone casting glints of rose and amber. Her happiness was too secret to talk about now, but after the Benefit, she and Matthew had a wonderful reason to celebrate! She had stepped back, turning around on her bare feet.

Brooke’s energy had wafted through the room like an apparition. Matthew observed the jewel blue dress flowing over her body and his already overwhelming desire for her multiplied. He had raised his arm above his head reaching for her but stopped—not now, not with Dex here, or even, considering the tectonic force rising inside him, Tara.

“Don’t move,” Brooke had said, leaving them. Later—when Goldfinger’s laser is about to bisect James Bond—Matthew had heard her closing the front door. And Brooke was gone.

Now she was missing the Benefit. And overwrought with worry, Matthew began bestowing people with soft-spoken but lavish compliments. That’s what Fletcher had taught him—whenever his ease abandoned him, Matthew should act: Display one emotion as another; fashion his foreboding into wry compassion.

Dorothy Hall was wearing a yellow-knit suit that Tara had warned her would be all wrong. Fletcher was in deep conference with Bernard as the bartenders announced last call. He hadn’t seen Connie at all, and so contrived an ever lighter, subtler manner.

When the band packed up and Brooke was still nowhere nearby, he asked a tuxedoed volunteer to fetch Tara.

Saying, “Darren, will you excuse me?” she tromped over to Matthew, who was still getting and giving air-kisses. Pulling him backwards, Tara said, “I have no idea where she is.”

“It’s time for wardrobe, but can you find your mother and ask her to check the A-frame?”

“Connie’s already there. She left twenty minutes ago.”

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An Antic Disposition

In bed that night, Matthew’s fingers stroked her breasts lighter than air blown from the fan. Her high round breasts with their tiny pink nipples seemed possibly, minimally fuller. Yet she was as lissome and active as ever. She slept less, not more, eager to be with him all she could. If Matthew asked how she felt, he was showing too much concern.

(click here for the first episode and here for the previous one.)

He had researched doctors and therapists and written lists, one for her and one he’d give to Tara. But how could he leave her? If he spoke of doctors and money, things she might need or want while he was away—Brooke refused to listen. She pressed her fingers against his lips and said, “Not yet.”

The next day Matthew parked on the street as ordered and Fletcher sat on his second-floor balcony, watching him run up the steep incline.

“My what a sinuous stride you have, Bond. If you run uphill in Readiness Is All, I’ll buy the movie just for that.”

Annoyed—perhaps he wasn’t up to Fletcher’s antics now—he stopped and walked.

“And yes, darling, your walk is also lovely.”

“Shall I ring,” Matthew called, “or are you going to let me in?”

“It’s unlocked.”

Matthew sat in the chair beside a glass of Perrier and Fletcher entered the living room, chest forward, head back, wearing ballet slippers with his linen trousers and moss green sweater. After pouring a glass of claret and lighting his cigarette, he said, “I must commend you, Bond. You’re much better on stage than I ever would have wagered.”

“For weeks I’ve been battling stage fright,” Matthew said. “In fact, I’m terrified. When I’m not panic-stricken, I fantasize about running away with her, which she isn’t what she wants. She wants me to play James Bond.”

“Abominable is appallingly smart. Both girls are. Terrible is a little numbers prodigy. Abominable is the creative one. If you love her, don’t stifle that.”

“Fletcher, I’m not that stupid. But if you can’t help me, I could go up on the whole play.”

“Nonsense!”

“I’ve asked Brooke and Tara if I seem strained. They say no.”

“Let’s see. You’re the Mayor of London conferring with his dead wife.” Fletcher took his wine glass into the other room and Matthew whispered the pleading line.

Cigarette holder clenched in his teeth, Fletcher returned to his seat. “Bravo, Bond. Dotty has shaped your voice so that a stunned whisper hits the ear nicely.” He swirled the wine in his glass. “I can’t recall anyone displaying so clearly the clash between the known and the unknown. Earlier, Bond, you didn’t have it in you.”

“Earlier, Fletch, my life was easy. I can’t leave Brooke. You have no idea how vulnerable she is.”

“It’s one of her gifts—to live unguarded. And in you, I can see something interesting happening. You glide about as smoothly and beautiful as ever. But you’re sending out flares from an inner life.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Don’t give me your false modesty, Bond. You would not have fallen in love with our little Abominable nor she with you if you had no inner awareness. And speaking of love, beware of possessiveness. Every time she approaches the sniveling Astley, you flex and crouch, ready to fight.”

“You’re making that up.”

“Watch yourself at rehearsal tonight. Astley has named ‘his girlfriend’ co-playwright. ‘After all,  he said, ‘her revisions make up almost half.’ Closer to ninety percent but why burst his bubble? He’s giving her the good news tonight. I’m preparing you so you don’t tear his head off.”

‘“Ridiculous,” Matthew said. “I’ve never been jealous. But if I were? Astley—no.”

“Have you talked to Abominable about how things will be while you’re playing James Bond?”

“How will things be, Fletch?”

“Infinitely better if when a benefactor engages me to direct a real play—she assists me.”

“Brooke goes to high school.”

“She shouldn’t. Unless, perhaps, you require a schoolgirl for your lover.”

“Do you want me to kick your head in?”

“She can get a GED. I cannot establish rapport without her. It may have escaped your notice, but I have an unfortunate disposition. Think how much happier she’ll be, assisting me Off Broadway than attending high-school assemblies.”

“I’ll suggest it, Fletcher. And I’ll make sure all the big shots at the Benefit know you’re a genius.”

“True,” he said. “Although it’s distinctly more palatable if you’re the one saying so. As for your Fallen Angel, here.” He put several pages in Matthew’s lap. “Look at the script she’s written. It requires editing and demands skilled actors but…it’s not high school. Your Beloved’s overly clever; every emotion is overdrawn. But her dramatic instincts are sublime.”

 

The afternoon before the Benefit, Brooke checked the calendar for the millionth time. She had missed two periods. In the side-room near the kitchen, Connie was finishing a cobalt-blue, halter-neck  dress made of a luxurious silken synthetic. Brooke tried it on for length. “Oh, it’s beautiful, Mama!” After changing back into her usual skirt and T-shirt, she slipped inside the downstairs bathroom. For best results—she hadn’t known this—you were supposed to pee on the tester when you first woke up. But Brooke had waited long enough. She peed on it until the strip was saturated. Results in ten minutes. Connie called, “Brooke, will you try this on one more time?”

She waltzed barefoot into the sewing room and her body hummed.

When she modeled the dress, her mother asked, “Are you wearing that special bra I ordered for you?”

“Can’t you tell?” She spun around.

“To me you always look perfect, honey, but tonight’s important.” Connie untied the fabric behind Brooke’s neck and adjusted the single bra strap so it lay flat. She must have seen the white-gold chain, which emboldened Brooke to lift the necklace outside her dress.

The ash quartz pendant Matthew had given her fell between her breasts. Connie swayed as the stone cast its rippling twilight but she didn’t say anything. Brooke returned to the bathroom and the monitor showed, as she knew it would, a dark solid line. And she, who ordinarily rose in jubilation, sank to her knees in gratitude.

Then she found Matthew watching a James Bond movie with Dex and Tara. “Good news,” she whispered in his ear.

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