Chapter Twenty-Five
Evelyn tried to make it the quickest tour she had ever given in her whole life. Sprinting through backstage, offices and cubicles, she was fully sweating by the time they reached the elevators.
“Are you okay?” Jared asked her curiously.
The question caught her off guard. “Of course,” she said, her back stiffening.
“You just seem—” He searched for the term. “Pent-up.”
“Pent-up?”
“Stressed,” he repeated, eyes feigning concern. “I’m just wondering if there’s something, specifically, about where we’re going next that is bothering you?”
She faltered on a response, just in time for the elevator door to ding and open. Evelyn escaped into the hall. Jared followed, and she continued giving her tour. “And these are the tunnels that connect our various buildings. You’ll notice a few offices on the way, but they’re nothing important.”
“What’s that?” Jared said, stopping in the hallway and pointing to the door she’d been purposefully avoiding.
“Oh.” She waved his question away. “Just the medical bay.”
“I want to see it.”
Evelyn paused, her eyes glancing toward the door.
Great. The last thing she wanted to do was see David.
“It’s very boring,” she said, trying to steer him away from the choice.
“Just Band-Aids and hand sanitizer, and no one important. But if we hurry through these tunnels, we may be able to catch them recording the latest episode of All My Kin.”
“Yeah,” Jared said, wrinkling up his nose. “I never really was into that show. But medical bays . . . I like medical bays. I like to know there’s a doctor on set if something goes wrong. Is this the medical bay responsible for the care and health of our musical?”
Evelyn huffed out the words, annoyed. “It is.”
“Then all the more important that I see it, no?”
Jared was determined. Begrudgingly, she acquiesced. “Of course,” she said, once again trying to bite down her annoyance. “A quick stop inside Medical, and then . . . on our way.”
David was on level five hundred and twelve of SpudzMash when a half-naked man came strolling into his medical bay and immediately began fondling every item in the room.
“Now this,” the stranger said, a thick British accent tinging each syllable, “this feels more right to me. The energy. The room. The medical supply cabinet.”
David put his phone down. “I’m sorry,” he said, rising from his seat. “Can I help you?”
He still wasn’t entirely sure what was going on when Evelyn appeared behind the topless stranger. David was surprised to see her. On instinct, he glanced down at his watch. She should have been smack-dab in the middle of rehearsal with Jared Sparks.
Quickly, David put two and two together.
“Sorry,” Evelyn said, speaking briskly. “Didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
“It’s no bother.” David smiled graciously.
“Jared,” Evelyn said. “This is Dr. David Adler. David . . . this is Jared Sparks, the star of our production of A Christmas Carol.”
Perhaps David should have recognized Jared from his infamous leather pants, but he had never been all that interested in the life and times of modern-day celebrities.
Indeed, he had once had a fifteen-minute conversation with Adam Sandler while waiting in line for smoked salmon at Murray’s Famous Fish Shop, only to realize who he had been talking to after the famous actor had left.
Still, the official introduction to Jared Sparks did little to explain why Jared, the man, was half naked and wandering through his medical bay barefoot.
He could see that Evelyn was very stressed out.
Beads of sweat pooled at the top of her hairline, and her entire forehead sat like it was situated in permafrost, full of wrinkles.
“Jared wanted a tour of our facilities,” Evelyn said in one exhausted huff.
David made it a point to be professional. Polite. “Ah,” he said. “Well, welcome to our medical bay, then. As you’ll see, our facilities are state-of-the-art and up-to-date, and entirely capable of handling any emergency that may arise on set during the—”
Jared interrupted him. “Why does she call you David?”
“Excuse me?” The question caught him off guard.
“It’s strange, no?” Jared mused thoughtfully. “To be introduced as David, and not Dr. Adler. It implies a level of familiarity.”
The room fell into an uncomfortable silence. David raised both eyebrows at Evelyn. Evelyn raised both eyebrows at him. The sunken lines on her forehead penetrated deeper.
“You two are familiar, then?” Jared asked curiously.
David decided to rescue her. “We were married.”
“Were?” His eyes darted between them.
“We divorced two years ago,” Evelyn spoke up.
Jared was clearly confused. “So, you’re divorced?”
“Yes,” Evelyn admitted. “For two years.”
“But you work together?”
“Only temporarily,” David clarified.
“You’re temporarily working with your ex-wife?”
David did his best to defend himself. “I’m just doing a favor for a friend,” David explained. “I actually live in rural Pennsylvania.”
“On a farm,” Evelyn offered up. “It’s very far from here.”
“Only eighty miles,” David confirmed. “Not that far. But when you never take a break from work—”
Evelyn’s neck snapped in his direction. “Really?”
“I mean, if someone really wanted to make something work.”
“You mean . . . if you hadn’t walked out on me?”
Ouch.
The room fell into a long and uncomfortable silence. Now David was the one with beads of sweat pooling around his forehead.
Jared’s head rolled to one side. “So, you still love each other, then?”
Evelyn answered for them both. “Absolutely not!”
David chuckled at the idea. “We’re divorced, after all.”
“Happily,” Evelyn added.
“Very happily,” David repeated, nodding his head up and down like a goddamn bobblehead.
“Yep.” Evelyn bounced confidently on two feet. “So . . . so happily divorced.”
Jared was not convinced. His eyebrows furrowed before he took one expansive inhale, sucking back all the oxygen in the room.
“Oh,” Jared waxed poetically, half to himself, half to whatever invisible theater specters existed in the drop ceiling above them.
“I see. This all makes sense now.” He stopped in front of the medicinal supply cabinet, bending down to investigate the lock.
“The bad energy. The weird vibes. The lack of love and passion on set. How can anyone feel love for our characters, for our production of A Christmas Carol . . . when our mommy and daddy are fighting.”
“I assure you, Jared,” Evelyn said, stepping forward.
“Whatever personal problems David and I have experienced are in the past, they will not affect the course of this production. In fact, we spoke about it earlier, and we both agreed to maintain our distance and keep a high level of professionalism for the rest of rehearsal. You don’t have to worry about anything interfering with your work, including our personal lives.
” Her head snapped in David’s direction. “Right, David?”
He forced a smile. “Right.”
“Now, Jared, if you would follow me.” Evelyn began inching toward the door. “We can finish your tour and get you over to costuming ASAP.” She glanced down at her watch. “Time is money, after all . . . and we’ve already missed a half day of rehearsal.”
“I don’t need to rehearse,” Jared said, waving away her concern.
“Of course you need to rehearse,” she shot back.
“You’re very pent-up, Evelyn.” Jared turned his attention directly to her. “Don’t you think she’s full of frustration, David?”
David shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
“No, no . . .” Jared said, stretching his bare arms above his head, cracking his neck.
“I can feel it, you know? It’s one of my gifts as an artist. I have this almost unreal ability to connect with the universe through the human heart.
I suppose you could say I’m sort of like a doctor myself. A love doctor, you know?”
It was unreal, all right.
And then, Jared—for no reason that David could tell—bent into downward dog.
He went fully catatonic from there. Head on the floor.
Not responding to external stimuli for a solid two minutes.
Not five seconds that felt like two minutes, mind you.
But two actual minutes. David found himself counting one Mississippi, two Mississippi inside his head.
“What the hell is he doing?” Evelyn came over, half whispering, fully freaking out.
David shrugged, attempting his best guess. “Connecting to the universe?”
“Well, make him stop!” Evelyn demanded.
David wasn’t sure what to do. “Um, Jared,” he said, kneeling to the man’s level. “Perhaps if you’d like to return to our planet here—”
Jared opened his eyes. “I understand now.”
“Great!” Evelyn exhaled the word, clearly relieved. Clapping her hands together, she tried once again to move the rock star toward the exit. “Then, we can move on from here, finish your costume fittings and hopefully get back to the studio and still have the whole afternoon to rehearse.”
“No, no, no.” Jared sighed emphatically, and also, David noted, planted his feet firmly on the floor. “That won’t do, at all.”
Evelyn lingered at the threshold. “Excuse me?”
“I just can’t work under these conditions,” Jared said, helping himself to a seat on David’s desk. “There’s too much tension, sadness, pent-up sexual frustration . . .”
“I’m certain you’re misreading the room,” Evelyn said.
“No, no,” Jared said. “My bliss baton always tells the truth.”
“Your what?” Evelyn asked, aghast.
“My jolly knobber,” he said, defining it. “My wand of wonders. It tells me when there is unrequited sexual tension in a space. It saps my energy, you know? It makes me feel sad and broken. Tell me . . . do you feel it, too, David?”
David glanced at Evelyn. “I can’t say that I do.”
“It’s here,” Jared said, sniffing the air like a dog.
“It’s in the air, seeping through the walls.
A rot that needs to be eliminated. And my trouser titan .
. . my behemoth beloved . . . he’s shriveling up inside these extremely formfitting and expensive leather pants as we speak.
” Jared sighed, forlorn. “Also, do you have any Demerol?”
“Excuse me?” David asked, his eyebrows lifting to the ceiling.
“Demerol,” Jared repeated simply. “I think it will help dull the painful reality of this sad and sexless space.”
“You are not getting Demerol on my watch,” Evelyn said.
“Actually,” David said, interrupting her. “I have something even better.”
“David—” Evelyn tried to stop him.
He ignored her, moving toward the medical supply cabinet. Unlocking it, he pulled out a small white pill from one of the bottles. Jared held out his hand, giddy at the prospect of taking a totally unnecessary painkiller.
“On one condition,” David said, holding the drug hostage in the air between them. “I give you this pill, and you do whatever Evelyn says for the rest of the day. No excuses. No more delays. You squelch whatever bad feelings you have . . . and you behave.”
Jared considered the offer. “Deal.”
David gave him the pill. Jared swallowed it down, without water, in one gulp. Evelyn, however, was not amused. Without missing a beat, she grabbed David by the arm and dragged him into the hall, out of earshot of Jared Sparks.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked, berating him in a very loud whisper.
“I’m helping you with your problem.”
“By giving Jared Sparks drugs? What if he dies?” she continued, frantic. “What if it gets out that we’re dealing opioids and painkillers to celebs on set? Seriously, David! I knew you hated me when you walked out on me, but now you’re hellbent on ruining my career, too.”
He had never hated her.
“It was vitamin D.”
She blinked. “What?”
“There was some in the cabinet,” David explained.
“It must have been Vikram’s. But point being, I noticed it the other day when I was searching for something to help with your headaches.
Look, my hunch is Jared Sparks never actually wanted a tour of the building.
He wanted drugs. I mean . . . are you really that surprised?
The guy is a mega rock star known for his too-tight leather pants.
We’ve dealt with this before when we worked together. Remember Angelika?”
“Angelika,” she whispered.
Angelika was a very well-known talk show host who had a penchant for middle-of-the-night temper tantrums. For about four months, while Evelyn worked as the supervising producer on the set of Live with Angelika, David’s wife had been her favorite emotional punching bag.
The only thing that ever staved off the consistently worsening abuse was David.
He would rush onto set whenever Evelyn called him, then fawn over the TV daytime talk show host, before hooking her up to an IV full of vitamins that promised youthful restoration of the skin and lower cortisol levels to help her deal with her awful and ungrateful staff.
It was always simply a bag of saline. But they were a team back then, playing the long game to a better and more secure future.
“I forgot about Angelika,” Evelyn said.
David wouldn’t have been surprised if she fully repressed the memory. “Yeah, well,” David said, rubbing the back of his neck. “You told me once that celebs are like children who need to be managed. So, I’m helping you manage Jared Sparks.”
Silence stretched between them. Yes, he was still on her side. Despite everything—including walking away from her—he wanted the best for his ex-wife. After a beat, her eyes flitted up to his. “So, you didn’t actually give him Demerol?”
“No,” he said gently. “But I did buy you time.”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
Moments later, Evelyn was off and taking Jared with her.
David watched them depart before returning to his office and pulling out his phone to drown out the boredom of television medicine by continuing his game of SpudzMash.
He tried, desperately, to focus on turning each and every one those little animated potatoes into rows of spinning latkes .
. . but he couldn’t concentrate. He lost level five hundred and twelve, repeatedly.
He gave up, putting the phone down. For all of Jared’s antics, the man wasn’t wrong.
There was something painful and disruptive between him and Evelyn.
It sat between them, some bloody wound screaming out for a torniquet.
He couldn’t get it out of his head. Jared’s words, the man’s surprisingly sober analysis, played like a song on repeat.
So, you still love each other, then?
It had never been a lack of love that had torn them apart. It wasn’t a lack of insight into the other or even a lack of chemistry. It was silence.