Chapter 4 #3
“Someone at the magazine suggested it,” I said, lying.
She stared at me, then poked her pasta with a fork.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s luck money,” she said.
“What’s ‘luck money’?”
“The kind you don’t earn. It doesn’t feel right.”
I exhaled. “Can’t you just enjoy it?”
Her expression changed. She took my hand. “I’m sorry, Alfie. This is really sweet. You strike it rich—-and you think of me. I do love you for that.”
We kissed, but I felt so bad that I time jumped back an hour and kept the ring in my pocket. We had a great night anyhow. And I learned another Truth About True Love: it doesn’t have to cost you anything.
Even when it might cost you everything.
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So now. To what made me famous.
I was sent to Mexico by Life magazine to do a story about a distance runner who was deaf due to a birth defect.
The young man, named Jaimie, was supremely gifted; at age eighteen he had already set a world record in the 1500 meters.
He was hoping to compete in the Atlanta Olympics later that year.
His family lived in a small village. His father had died, and Jaimie worked as a dishwasher in his mother’s restaurant.
Her name was Marisol, only thirty--five herself, but older--looking from the endless hours she spent in the restaurant kitchen.
The small profits she made went to pay for her son’s training.
We used a sign language translator for our interviews.
Jaimie was a sweet kid with a sharp sense of humor.
At one point he lent me a pair of his running shoes, and we did a few laps together around a track, with me desperately trying to keep up.
When we finished, he signed to his translator, “Ask him when I can take the chains off my legs.”
I stayed for a few days. The morning I was scheduled to leave, Jaimie, Marisol, the photographer, and I were heading to the restaurant when we stopped at a bank to make a deposit. It was a small branch, with one teller and a couple of desks. The door was open to the heat.
Jaimie signed to his mother that he would fill out the deposit slip while the photographer took Marisol across the way to get some shots.
A minute later, three men in sweat suits entered the bank.
I watched two of them move quickly to the teller.
The third lingered by the door. I turned my attention back to Marisol and the photographer.
Suddenly, I heard a gunshot. I spun and saw the man by the door holding a pistol in the air. He started screaming in Spanish and everyone inside—-Marisol, the photographer, the workers, the other customers, and me—-all dropped to the ground.
All except Jaimie.
His back was turned so he couldn’t see what was going on, and obviously, being deaf, he couldn’t hear the commotion.
The gunman shouted at him and drew closer, waving his pistol.
But Jaimie had his head lowered, writing.
He never saw the guy until he snatched away the deposit envelope.
Jaimie instinctively lunged for it, and the gunman shot him twice in the thigh.
Marisol screamed. Jaimie crumpled to the floor. The three robbers raced out the door. Suddenly the place was silent, save for the agonizing cries of a young athlete holding his bleeding leg and likely wondering if his future had just been erased.
I panicked. I’d never seen anyone shot before. I slammed my eyes shut and shouted “Twice!” But the image in my head was of us entering the bank. Instantly, we were there again, Jaimie heading to fill out the deposit slip, Marisol and the photographer moving to the window.
I froze. I hadn’t gone back far enough. Before I could even yell anything, the three men walked in, and two of them again headed to the teller. My head swiveled from them to Marisol to the guy at the door.
BANG! The gunman fired and yelled at Jaimie, and the only thing I could think to do was run for him.
If I could get him to the ground, maybe the gunman would leave him alone.
I sprinted Jaimie’s way and saw him glance up just as I dove for his legs, tackling him like a linebacker.
I heard the gun fire and the teller screaming and I felt Jaimie beneath me and a hot sting in my shoulder.
The three robbers raced out the door and I fell off Jaimie and glanced down to a mess of blood around my collarbone.
“Alfie!” the photographer yelled. “Oh my God, you’re shot!”
I shut my eyes and whispered “Twice--twice--twice!” but nothing happened—-I’d redone the moment already—-and as I clamped my jaw against this newfound pain, I realized that whatever followed, this was one mistake I was going to have to live with.
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The bullet, thank God, went straight through. I spent a week in a Mexico City hospital before they let me go home. Gianna was waiting at the airport. She burst into tears when she saw my arm in a sling.
“Oh, no, no, no, Alfie—-”
“It’s OK,” I said as she threw her arms around me. “Could be worse.”
“You got shot. How could it be worse?”
There were a million answers to that. But I said nothing.
Gianna tended to me during the weeks that followed in a gentle, loving way that showed itself in all the small things—-my coffee waiting in the morning, an extra pillow for my shoulder, a bottle of ibuprofen on my nightstand, a second washcloth prepared after cleaning my wound with the first one.
I must admit, I wasn’t the best patient.
Not because of the injury, but because Life wanted the whole story, and quickly, and typing one--handed was pretty difficult.
Meanwhile, other people were interviewing Jaimie, who credited me with saving his life.
When he made the Olympic team in Atlanta, he announced as a tribute he would race in the shoes that he’d lent me.
He won his event by more than two seconds, again setting a new world record. I was there to witness it. At his press conference, he asked me up onstage.
“Without Mr. Alfie Logan,” he signed, “I would never have this.” He held up his gold medal and put his arm around my neck. Cameras whirred and flashes popped.
As you might imagine, the story took off.
Suddenly I was getting calls from TV shows to do interviews with Jaimie and Marisol.
We appeared on several programs, and the crowds were enthusiastic.
It didn’t hurt that Jaimie had a great smile, while his mother, who did the signing for him, was humble and funny.
I let them tell the tale of the bank robbery. They made me sound braver than I was.
One day, after the three of us did a morning talk show in New York, I returned home to find two voicemails on my answering machine, both from movie executives in California interested in buying the Life magazine story for a film. I listened to their messages with Gianna.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think you told the story already.”
“But not as a movie.”
“It wasn’t a movie.”
That silenced me. Gianna had a talent for saying one thing that dammed up a conversation faster than a cork in a bottle.
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In hindsight, I wish I’d left it there. But I didn’t.
I was intrigued by the idea of a film. I knew a literary agent from my magazine work, and I asked him to get involved.
He made some calls, talking up the story.
The next thing I knew, I was flying to Los Angeles to meet with multiple interested parties, which my agent said was the best possible scenario.
“Just tell the tale as dramatically as you can,” he instructed, “and before you leave let them know you’re meeting with other people. I’ll do the rest.”
And so, to rooms full of fascinated faces, I told the story again and again during four studio meetings.
The first three were largely the same. An airy office and a sizable conference table.
Bottles of Perrier. Young executives cooing about the drama of the robbery while tossing around names of famous actors who could play the various parts.
Just before the last meeting, in a huge conference room on a high floor of a Hollywood talent agency, I asked if I could use the phone to call Gianna. She sounded frustrated when she answered.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“The shutter broke on my camera. I just had it fixed last year. Now I have to take it in again.”
“We should buy a new camera.”
“I don’t need a new camera. I just need a shutter that works.”
“Sorry.”
“I was hoping to go to the Bronx Zoo tomorrow.”
“Again?”
“Yes, again. Why?”
“Nothing.”
The zoo was all she had left of her photography dreams. She often went there when I was out of town.
“Well, I hope you can fix it,” I said.
“I will. Sorry. I’m just frustrated. How are your meetings going?”
“Good, I think. They seem interested.”
“When are you coming home?”
Just then the door swung open and four people entered.
Three of them looked like the other executives I had met, young men in jeans, baseball caps, shirts untucked, but the fourth was a woman you would have noticed from another zip code.
I knew her face from the movies, but when you see such a familiar face in the flesh, you blink, as if something about it can’t be real.
Her hair was blond as wheat, her eyes shielded by amber sunglasses, her skin perfectly tanned, her teeth almost impossibly white.
But it was the command with which she moved that captivated me.
I wondered: Do stars become stars because of a quality the rest of us don’t have, or is it learned? Either way, she took my breath.
“Alfie . . . ?” I heard Gianna say again. “When are you coming home?”
“Let me call you back. We’re gonna start.”
I hung up before she finished her “OK” as the woman approached and extended her hand.
“Hi, I’m Nicolette Pink,” she said.
“I know,” I mumbled back.
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