50 CARTER
C ARTER
“Like I said, I nearly lost my ass over that story,” Michael says, echoing his earlier comment about the Rolling Stone piece we’d done a while back. “If you can even call it that.”
“I never was much for interviews, as you of all people know,” I admit.
“I figured you hated my guts that day. I was sweating the whole time.” He scratches his head again. “Which still makes me wonder why, of all people, I’m the one here now serving as the interviewer for this film.”
“Because,” I say, “she said you’d be the right one. Said you were a good fit. In all fairness, if I’d known that when we did that last interview, I might have been a little more agreeable. But probably not.”
“I don’t understand. Have I met her?”
“The two of you used to work together a long time ago,” I tell him, and his eyes widen.
“Cameron,” he says, trying to place her. “Why has that name been sounding so familiar?” A moment later he locates the memory. His jaw drops a little. “Wait a minute, Cameron Leigh . That’s her?”
I nod. “It wasn’t her real name, but yes.”
“I’ll be damned. Wow, that’s going back.
” He smiles slightly in the way people do when they’re reminded of someone from their youth.
“I remember her. We used to cover the same circuit. She was good. She was friends with Derek d’Orsay, I think, yeah?
” I can see more memories of her rising to the surface.
“She was going places. Striking, though, too, I remember,” he says.
“I can’t disagree with that.”
“She was talented. But I never heard much about her after that. Left the business, right?”
It’s hard to think of the talent that went unused, the dreams that were abandoned. She never blamed me, of course, but I blame myself. I wonder where her life might have taken her had she not met me. But she tells me she found happiness, and I’m sure in many ways that’s very true.