CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
VIGGO RASSMUSSEN
No! Jawfain?! Get him out of there!
Vampire Falls. Season five, episode two – “Two Heads Are Better Than None”
As I hadn’t expected to have a one-to-one with my hero today, I’ve just gone with my scheduled Sunday clothing which consists of grey jogger bottoms, a Vampire Falls hoodie and my red Vans. By Sunday it’s usually all about comfort, and that’s what my soles and my soul are craving right now.
I turn down the corridor and let out a long sigh.
Honestly, I thought I’d be more excited at the prospect of coffee with Viggo Rassmussen himself, but I can’t snap myself into full superfan mode, not when there’s a part of my heart missing.
If Roxy were here, we’d be holding hands and running down the corridor, then we’d do a jumpy dance. I took her jumpy dance for granted.
Felix is outside a meeting room, rubbing his forehead as he looks at his phone. He looks up and smiles at me, barely, and shoves his phone into his back pocket.
“Hey, Eliza,” he manages. “You’re here.”
Shadows under his eyes and a chin full of stubble show just how much these weekends take out of him. I kind of don’t blame him for making a change.
“Hey, Felix. Thanks so much for this.”
“Not at all,” he says, waving my thanks away. “Thank you for being such a big part of our final weekend. It means a lot.”
He looks at me, his eyes brimming with such sadness I almost launch myself at him for a hug but instead he knocks on the door. Voices come from inside and it opens.
“Hi there,” says Debbie, a Californian smile on her face. “Mr Van Schwartz is excited to meet with you, Eliza.”
Felix’s smile falters as he looks at his phone again, then starts backing down the hallway.
“I’ll leave you with Debbie, Eliza,” he says over his shoulder. “Enjoy yourself.”
“OK . . .” I call after him, but he’s already disappeared round the corner.
I look at Debbie for an explanation but she’s still smiling at me. She seems to be in permanent smile mode. Her cheeks must ache.
“If you’d like to come in?” she says.
“Sure, I . . .”
I hover in the doorway, certain I can hear someone crying in the distance.
Wondering if it could be Felix and if I need to unholster that hug, I look down the corridor, but Sadie runs round the corner, her face blotchy and streaming with tears.
I don’t know what’s happened, but the sight of a crying Sadie splits my heart in two.
I open my arms as she gets closer and she falls into me, squishing her face into my shoulder.
“Sadie? What’s the matter?” I say, looking over her for injuries. “Are you OK?”
She tries to speak but just sobs louder. I squeeze her back, waiting for her to find her words until Charlie runs round the corner. A mix of relief and tension confuses my body as our eyes lock, and he stops a couple of steps from us.
“Sadie, I know you’re upset but please don’t ever run away from me like that,” he says.
She clings to me tighter and hiccups something into my chest, like she’s seven years old again and doesn’t understand why she can’t watch the lady with the sword tell off monsters with us.
“What did you say, Sadie?” I say, frowning at Charlie who just shakes his head and shrugs.
She looks up at me, her huge eyes spilling over with tears.
“The . . . the . . . karaoke p-p-party is c-c-cancelled,” she manages, squeezing her eyes closed.
“What?” I say, shaking my head. “Felix wouldn’t do that, not for the last convention. He knows what it means to us.”
“And Ch-Ch-Charlie says we have to l-l-leave today!” Charlie puts his hand on her shoulder, but she shrugs him off. “I hate you, Charlie!”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “What’s happened to the party tonight?”
I stroke Sadie’s hair, as Charlie looks over his shoulder then leans into me. Child is suffering trauma, yet my skin still sparkles as boy closes the space between us. God, I’m pathetic.
“Apparently the karaoke guy hasn’t shown up,” says Charlie.
“How do you know?”
“Sadie has made me sit in the green room and all the other off-limit sections the entire weekend. I heard a couple of Felix’s team stressing about it. The guy isn’t answering his phone and Felix has already paid him.”
“Can’t they just do another silent disco?” I ask.
“The sound guys are halfway to Newcastle with all the equipment. I heard there’s literally zero money left.
Apparently, Felix put everything into this weekend.
He’s skint. Most of this has run on the goodwill of the guests, especially .
. .” Charlie nods towards the open door.
I look round. Damon Van Schwartz. “Apparently, Damon thinks a lot of Felix and loves doing this so much he talked all the other actors into coming without an upfront fee. Felix isn’t making a penny, and now the karaoke guy hasn’t shown up. ”
“So,” I say, totally relating to Sadie’s eleven-year-old meltdown, “the final, final convention party isn’t happening?”
Charlie shrugs. I look at him and swallow.
“But why are you guys leaving early?”
“What’s the point in staying?” He tries to shrug again, but his shoulders have tensed up. “It’s not going to end how I . . . how she wanted it to.”
Charlie puts his hand round my back and for a moment I think he’s going to hug me, but instead he takes Sadie’s hands and unfurls her from me. She’s just snivelling now, worn out from the crying.
“C-can I have a piggyback?” she asks, looking more like the little girl I first met nearly five years ago.
Charlie assumes the universal piggyback position, and Sadie manages to jump up, pressing her head against Charlie’s shoulders. I tuck her hair behind her ear, and she blinks at me, her bottom lip wobbling a little.
“Sorry, Sadie,” I say, as Charlie carries her away to pack up her unfinished weekend.
I watch them disappear, then Debbie’s voice pipes up beside me.
“Shall we?”
Shall we what? I wonder for a second then I sense that I’m close to a forcefield of greatness and never-ending talent, and I remember why I’m there. Damon Van Schwartz stands next to Debbie, looking at me with his slushie-blue eyes.
“Sorry, I was on my cell, and honestly, I couldn’t bear to see the kid like that.” He shakes his head, his hand on his chest. “Anyway, let’s do this. Eliza, right?”
I nod and follow him into the small meeting room. We sit at the end of a long table with a few headshots of him fanned out.
“Charlie’s swinging by again before he goes, right?” Debbie nods, and Damon Van Schwartz looks round at me and smiles. “What would you like? Debbie is happy to head out and get our drinks.”
“Oh,” I say, looking at Debbie. “Iced latte, if that’s OK?”
“Sure,” she replies, her tight smile suggesting it’s very much not OK and she thought her coffee fetching days were behind her. “Usual for you?”
Damon Van Schwartz nods and Debbie hustles from the room in a cloud of Chanel. He slides the headshots towards me.
“A gift for you, Eliza. All signed, of course.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I think I’ll give them to Sadie.”
“Oh, she has one of each already,” he says, smiling, “and I gave Charlie a Falls folder too.”
“That’s kind of you.”
He waves his hand and shrugs.
“After what Charlie did for me,” he says, “it was the very least I could do.”
I nod, remembering that moment on the first day and how much I hated Charlie for muscling in on my big fan weekend. It feels like a million years ago.
He clasps his hands together and looks at me over the top of them, one eyebrow raised.
“May I make an observation, Eliza?”
“Um, yes?” I say, still waiting for my excitement to bubble up and wreak havoc, but it can’t find its way to the surface.
“As an actor, I’m very much a watcher of people,” he explains, waving his hands around. “I notice things that others wouldn’t. How people wear their emotions on their face, how they carry it on their shoulders. That sort of thing.”
I nod. Face and shoulders. OK.
“I’m also an excellent listener, but when I say that I don’t mean listening with my ears. I mean, listening with this.”
He points at the buttons on his black shirt. I lean in, looking for a secret listening device until I realise he’s pointing to his heart.
“OK . . .” I say.
“What is the relationship status between you and my good friend Charlie? Because the three times I mentioned his name since you got in here, I saw something on your face.”
My hand flies up to my face, worried I’ve still got flakes of pecan pastry on my cheek or something, but again, I realise what he’s saying.
“Really?”
“Yes, really,” he says, leaning forward. “You two have a connection, right?”
I shake my head.
“Connection maybe isn’t a word I’d . . . I mean, we used to . . .”
I jump when he slams his palm against the table, just as Debbie swoops back in with our drinks.
“I knew it! You can’t hide that kind of history. Charlie kept talking about you, and I just knew it. I know what to listen for to get the hidden story, Eliza. Didn’t I say I knew it, Debbie?”
“You did,” she says, gently setting his cup and saucer down, the smell of peppermint tea wafting over the table.
She plonks my plastic takeaway cup on the table with such disinterest that it nearly tips over.
“Thank you,” I say, grabbing it with both hands (I’m still wary of milky drinks).
Debbie settles in the chair next to Damon Van Schwartz and looks at her phone. I watch him dunk the teabag around the cup, then clear my throat.
“Ask away, Eliza,” he says.
“How’d you know I wanted to ask something?”
“Told you. I listen from here,” he says, pointing to his chest again.
“Um, did Charlie really talk about me?”
“He did,” he confirms.
“What did he say?” I ask, the tips of my ears getting hot.
“Usual stuff. Complaining about you. How annoying you are,” he says, his blue eyes twinkling.
“Oh. That’s not very encouraging.”
“Oh, but don’t you see, Eliza. It is. It’s more than encouraging.”
I cross my arms, not really sure how Charlie grumbling about how irritating he finds me can be a positive thing.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t pry in your personal business, I just love to see people connect.” He leans forward, putting his elbows on the table. “What else would you like to ask me?”
“Is it true the karaoke party isn’t happening tonight?”
He glances at Debbie then takes a sip of his tea.
“I kind of meant something about me or my process, but OK,” he says. “Yes, I’m afraid it is. Poor Felix. That guy loves all of you nearly as much as I do.”
He puts his tea down, and ordinarily I’d be thinking of ways to steal his used teabag, but all I can think of is poor Sadie.
I look down at my hoodie; there’s still a little wet patch of Sadie tears.
I can’t believe the final party of the final convention isn’t happening, and we’re all going to be left sort of . . . hanging.
“I can’t believe it’s coming to an end like this,” I say, shaking my head and blinking back tears.
Damon Van Schwartz frowns and sits back in his chair.
“What?” he says, looking round at Debbie, who’s still smiling but also raising her eyebrows. “Who told you it’s ending?”
“You just told me,” I say, frowning at him and Debbie.
“I did not just tell you Vampire Falls is ending,” he says, putting both his hands up.
“What?!” Apparently, I’ve just jumped up and knocked my chair back. The room spins and my throat feels like it’s closing. “Vampire Falls is ending?”
“Mr Van Schwartz did not say that,” says Debbie, putting her hands on her hips. “You’re putting words in his mouth.”
“That’s exactly what he said,” I say. “He’s putting words in his own mouth.”
“Guys, guys, please,” Damon Van Schwartz says, trying to blind me with his perfect smile. “Whatever you think you might have heard . . .”
“You just said it,” I repeat.
“Whatever you think I may have said, is possibly classified information only to be officially shared at a time when the network sees fit.”
I stare at him, a bit of worry tilting those perfectly threaded eyebrows upwards, and I sigh, exhausted. I lift my chair back up and slump onto it, my legs unable to take the weight of any more bad news or breakups or arguments.
“Why?” I ask, imagining Sadie’s face when she hears that her new favourite thing is coming to an end.
He shrugs and shakes his head, wistfulness glistening in his eyes.
“Everything changes, Eliza. If you try to fight that, you just end up alone.” He stares at the carpet and takes a sip of tea, then he’s back in TV star mode by the time he puts the cup down on the saucer.
He claps his hands. “Let’s get back to business.
It’s not every day you get to have coffee with a Hollywood star, am I right? ”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s not ending like this. I won’t let it.”
Damon Van Schwartz glances at Debbie, exchanging an unspoken code for when a fan is about to go Annie Wilkes on him, but they don’t need to worry.
I’m in a room with my favourite actor from my favourite TV show and he’s just dropped a bombshell, a heartbreaking, life-altering bombshell, but something else occupies my core right now.
All I can think about is how tightly Sadie held on to me as she sobbed; the best weekend of her life coming to a crumbling, disappointing end. And then it hits me.
“She doesn’t think she’s a real fan until she’s completed her first convention,” I murmur, standing up slowly.
“Are you OK?” asks Debbie, edging towards me like I’m a wild horse.
“No,” I say, looking at her. “No, I’m not OK, but I know how to make it better.”
I head to the door.
“Where are you going?” asks Damon Van Schwartz. “You haven’t touched your coffee, and we wanted a few fun selfies for Insta.”
“Sorry, I can’t,” I say, gathering up the headshots (well, he did sign them especially for me).
Damon Van Schwartz looks at Debbie, then nods and stands up.
“You go to him, Eliza,” he says, tapping his chest. “You go to him, and you tell him.”
I walk to the door, turn back and nod, but this has nothing to do with Charlie, like Damon Van Schwartz thinks.
This is for her.