Chapter 4 #4
Now, I’ll spare you all the business details that followed, Boss.
Suffice it to say a bidding war ensued, as my agent had predicted, and we had multiple offers to make the movie for a crazy price, but ultimately chose the studio that had Nicolette Pink as its partner, because she wanted to direct the film and star in it as Marisol.
She was, at the time, maybe the biggest actress in the country, the winner of several major awards, although her most popular film was a raunchy comedy in which she played an oversexed high school teacher.
We signed the papers and they sent me a sizable check—-and another to Jaimie and Marisol in Mexico.
They hired a big--name screenwriter who wrote a script that only loosely followed the real story.
He took numerous liberties, including this one: instead of me being married, in the movie I was single and ended up falling in love with Marisol (played by Nicolette, with her blond hair colored a sable shade).
The explanation was that the film “needed a love story.” I had no say in this—-you give away such rights when you take the money—-and was completely surprised when I read it.
But not as surprised as Gianna.
“What is this?” she asked, holding out the script like a smelly fish.
“What?”
“You’re single? You fall in love with Jaimie’s mother?”
“I know.” I sighed. “It’s just a movie.”
“So they make things up?”
“I guess.”
“Doesn’t Jaimie think it’s stupid? Or Marisol?”
“They probably don’t care.”
“They’re using your real name.”
“I know.”
“And theirs.”
“Because it’s based on a true story.”
“But this—-” She held up the script. “Is not a true story.”
“What do you want me to do, Gianna?”
She shook her head. “You already did what I didn’t want you to do. Why ask me now?”
She tossed the script on the couch.
“You don’t want to finish it?” I asked.
“Why should I? Like you said, it’s a movie. I’ll watch it when it comes out.” She looked away. “Or I won’t.”
“Hey, I’m sorry,” I said, leaning down and touching her knees. “It’s out of my hands.”
I saw she was crying.
“It’s wrong,” she rasped. “You falling in love with someone else.”
“I know.”
“Can’t you give the money back? Tell them no thanks?”
“They gave money to Jaimie and Marisol, too, remember? They need it.”
She exhaled and looked away. For a while she said nothing.
“What?” I whispered. “Gianna. Talk to me.”
“I want to have a baby.”
I swallowed.
“All right.”
“All right?” she repeated.
Her face changed. Her eyes lifted. Her smile lit me up. I’d do anything for that smile. Even something I didn’t mean.
Which is what I had just done.
?
Now, at this point, Boss, you’re likely saying “I don’t remember a film with Nicolette Pink where she played a runner’s mother and fell in love with a journalist.” There’s a reason for that, which I will detail.
But I need to explain something bigger first. Something that changed my life with Gianna forever.
The movie was being shot in Mexico, and I spent a lot of time on the set, at Nicolette’s request. Because Jaimie was in training, and Marisol was running her restaurant, I was the only one available to verify certain details, especially with the actor playing me.
Nicolette encouraged that. She was highly focused and professional during the shoot.
But at night, when she invited me to view the edits of the day’s filming, she often let her guard down.
We spoke candidly. She was honest and quick--witted.
One late session, she shared stories about her life as an actress, the lewd advances she had to tolerate from producers and directors when she was coming up, and their constant emphasis on her looks, weight, and skin.
“I wouldn’t think you’d have to worry about that,” I said.
“You’d be surprised,” she replied. “This”—-she waved a hand at herself—-“takes a lot of work. And you’re never not ‘on’ in this business.”
“Why did you go into it?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. I had a lousy childhood.
I came to California on my own when I was still a teenager.
I was running away from who I was, the stuff I’d gone through.
Acting, getting to pretend you’re someone else, seemed like a good way of dealing with all that, I guess.
Like you’re getting a second chance, you know? ”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, trying to ignore the irony.
She smiled and leaned back. Her tapered white shirt clung to her thin waist.
“There was a movie once named Alfie,” she said. “Did you ever see it?”
“No. But my mother nicknamed me for it. Well. For that song.”
“No way.”
“Yeah.”
“Alfie was a ladies’ man, you know.”
“That’s what I’ve heard.”
“What’s it all about, Alfie?” she warbled, singing the first line from that song, the way everybody does. Then she reached for the hair behind my left ear. “Ooh . . . you’ve got a real cowlick sticking out here.”
“Sorry,” I said. I felt a jolt though my body when she touched me.
“Why are you sorry?” She pressed it down gently. “It’s not a flaw.”
“Right. Yeah. Sorry. I mean. You know.”
She turned back to the screen, then slumped, as if it were homework.
“My eyes are blurry,” she said. “Do you want to get a drink?”
Nassau
“Jesus,” LaPorta mumbled.
“What are you reading?” Sampson said.
“The suspect’s notebook. It’s all garbage, I think.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You know that actress Nicolette Pink?”
“From the high school teacher movie?”
“Yeah. He says she made a movie about him.”
“What was it called?”
LaPorta flipped through pages. “I don’t even know. It was about a Mexican robbery and a writer who gets shot.”
Sampson shrugged. “Never saw it.”
“Me neither.”
LaPorta undid his safety belt, which was digging into his shoulder. He studied the gnarled traffic.
“How much longer?”
“If I cut behind the bus depot up ahead, I can swing around south of the beach and get to the hotel that way. Maybe ten minutes.”
“Do it.”
As Sampson eased the car over, LaPorta reached for his cell phone and called the police officer who was taking Alfie to jail.
“Hello, sir?” the officer answered.
“Everything good?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Suspect with you?”
“He’s in the back . . . Wait . . .”
LaPorta heard muffled conversation.
“He says he wants to talk to you.”
LaPorta squeezed his fingers between his eyes. “All right. Put him on.”
A long pause. Then.
“Vincent?”
“You call me Detective.”
“Detective. Are you still reading?”
LaPorta sighed. “I’m stuck in traffic, so as a matter of fact, I am.”
“Where I marked?”
“You mean the bent page?”
“You found it?”
“Very clever. What difference does it make?”
“All the difference, if you finish.”
“I’m a little busy, Alf—-”
“If you want to make sense with Gianna, you’ll need to finish.”
“OK, lover boy, thanks for the tip.”
Sampson glanced over. LaPorta made a face, as if to say This guy is nuts.
“Why don’t you concentrate on confessing, Alfie? Let me worry about your ex--wife.”
“She won’t understand,” Alfie said.
“Oh, I’ll be very clear. Especially about the two million.”
“She’ll say she doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That won’t surprise me.”
A pause. “Something else will.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Keep reading, Vincent.”
He hung up.
The Composition Book
My father died nine years ago, Boss. Remember when we were working in Morocco and I asked for some time off?
I actually went home to Philadelphia. I never told you, because I didn’t want you feeling sorry for me.
You didn’t know my dad. Not in this life, anyhow.
There was an earlier time when you met him.
Spoke to him. Even laughed with him. But I had to undo those moments, and you’ll have no recollection of them.
Revealing this might make you rack your brain.
Spare yourself. When I wipe a slate, I wipe it clean.
Dad died from a stroke, or the complications of one.
He was with his second wife, Monica, in a New Jersey supermarket, when his legs buckled and he thudded to the floor.
The stroke made his left hand involuntarily lock around the shopping cart handle, so his limp body was hanging on with one arm, like a lost sailor grasping a buoy at sea.
By the time they got him stabilized at the hospital, he couldn’t move his appendages, his speech was slurred, and his eyesight was nearly gone. Monica called me in Morocco and told me the doctor said the next twenty--four hours were critical. I couldn’t take a chance on getting home too late.
So I time jumped back eight days and flew to my old hometown and the house where I grew up.
And I spent what turned out to be the final week of my father’s life sleeping in my childhood bedroom, taking him out for breakfast every morning, playing a few rounds of golf, and having a final conversation that I’d long wanted to have.
?
“You feel like getting a root beer, Dad?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
We had just finished eighteen holes and were passing an old drive--in fast--food joint named Burt’s.
It had been there forever. We ordered through the window: two root beers and four hot dogs.
Then I parked in the back, away from the other cars, and with the doors open and the sun beating down, we shoved the doughy rolls into our mouths and sipped noisily on the sodas through straws.
Off in the distance someone was mowing grass.
“We haven’t done this in a long time,” my father said.
“Not since I was a kid.”
“You know, once you retire, you have more leisure time than you thought you would.” He paused. “It’s nice of you to take a week off, Alfie. Nice to have you around.”
“Thanks.”
I watched him cradle the hot dog. His hands shook slightly. It had been two years since I’d seen him; he’d aged considerably. His close--cropped hair was white above his eyeglass temples, and the whiskers on his jowls caught the light like sprinkled salt.
“Dad?”
“Hmm?”
He took a long, slow bite.
“Can I ask you something? It’s about Mom.”
He nodded.