Chapter 32

3 Months Later

Manhattan was experiencing one of its worst winters.  The temperature had dropped to the teens a month earlier and hadn’t changed.  Snow was a regular visitor and many streets and avenues had the same snow around trees and parking meters that had fallen weeks earlier.  The normal slush and lakes of water that characterized most street corners during the winter thaws had not occurred.  Newspaper headlines carried a daily dose of “Street Maintenance” woes and street vendor sales of gloves and scarves were at an all-time high.

One such vendor was an avid reader of the daily newspapers.  Benny the Turk had his hawking license for 6^th Ave between 52^nd and 54^th and most often set up his wares next to Lenny’s news stand on 53rd.  Benny couldn’t help but overhear the conversation this morning as Harrison queried Lenny on the buying habits of his customers.

“You know all about that stuff, Mr. James.  What you asking me for?”

Harrison blew into his cold hands as he continued asking about the four popular tabloids Lenny had stacked in a most prominent spot.  “Because the national figures aren’t my main concern, Lenny.  He picked up the “Galaxy” and fingered the lead story.  “Kavanaugh forsakes beer for expensive wine.”  “Does anyone really care?” 

Lenny smiled, “If your snap-photographers can’t get peeping tom sex, it’s against the law now you know Mr. James, then they’ll get what they can and…”

“But Kavanaugh,” Harrison interrupted.  Next, they’ll be featuring Kanye giving up sanity… again.”  He dug into his pocket and handed Lenny three one-dollar bills as he rolled the Galaxy and slid it into his briefcase.

“As a matter of fact… thanks Mr. Harrison… ‘Night Stories’ guy, John Pepper, said just that.”

Harrison did a double take.  “Said what?”

“Kanye ranting is going to be on his cover in April,” quipped Lenny.

“Shit,” barked Harrison.  Quickly picking one each of the other three tabloids, skipping only his own Profile, and jamming them in his briefcase, he opened his money clip once again, this time peeling off a twenty.  “Here, Lenny.  You say these damn things are selling more than the Profile and they’re featuring bad trash… getting-old-bad-trash.  Doesn’t make sense.” 

“Maybe they’re starved, Mr. James.  Thanks for the business.” 

“Yeah… oh, you’re welcome.”  As he walked away, he grounded one last thought, “Maybe they are, Lenny.  Maybe they are.”

***

“And maybe they’re not, Harrison,” came the voice of the always reserved Art Director, Eddie Ryan.  “My guess is the same now as it was nine months ago.  They want smut anyway they can get it.”

“Walton, look at those covers,” said Harrison as he spread his competitors across the conference table.  “They’re not intriguing.  They’re not imaginative.  They’re not ‘today.’”

“No, but they are outselling the Profile because they’re about fucking and Ari fucked us.”

“Not true.”

“Harrison, better I bring you to your senses than the public.  You gave him the right to play us.  I’ve been with you fifteen years and you never caved in to anyone, not even Hurito.  But this Ari guy…”

Harrison looked at his watch.  “This ‘Ari guy’ was given a break, a much-needed vacation and…”

“…and he screwed us on our deadline.”

“That was three months ago,” said Harrison.

‘Three months or yesterday… it still happened, and we’ve been treading water for the past three issues losing our valuable share of the market with covers that haven’t sold dick, let alone the slick, thick paper inside.”

“We’ve held our own.”

“You mean we’ve survived.  Hurito is going to have all our asses next week when he reads your quarterlies.”

“I gave him the time he asked for, and I’ve got one more issue to prove my point.”

“Your point being a vacation for Ari was all that was needed?”

“That a vacation for Ari was all that was needed,” answered Harrison as he rose and went to the window overlooking the roofs of apartment buildings below. 

“Well I guess this meeting is over, yes?”

Harrison paused a moment, peering down at the smoke coming from the chimneys many stories below him that were all but buried with snow.  “You know how much snow it would take to cave in one of those roofs?”

“Not a good metaphor, Harrison.  They’ve stood the test for decades.” Ryan gathered his files up and stepped to the door.  “When are you expecting the call?”

“Sometime this morning.”

“Good luck,” said Ryan as he quietly exited.

*** 

A production assistant arrived with a bottle of Avian just as Max plopped himself down in his chair. 

“I’m sorry Mr. Quinlan, but the last case they put in the cooler only had about 10 minutes to cool.”

Max unscrewed the cap, “Don’t worry, Burt, anything wet is a welcome relief.”  As he took several swallows, his eyes starred up at the void of pure blue sky. 

“Can I get you anything else?”

“Thanks, Burt.  A rainy day would be nice.”

The PA smiled.  “Rain?”

“Just dreaming of a forced day off for all of us.”

“Oh,” Burt chuckled, “I knew you were kidding.”

As Burt moved onto other check points all good PA’s know is expected, Max took a long drink, looked around him at the complexity of the set standing stark in the Mojave Desert.  Science fiction had never been his forte but reading the script of Jason Bard had convinced him that the theatre might possibly be revived or find a new beginning or meaning to brain dead movie goers if this script were put to the screen.  Never, however, had he contemplated the hardship such a shoot might be.  They had been thirty-two days in the desert with a cast of four scientists as lost survivors of a research lab crashing into a distant planet.  His writer had sold the script with the provision that he be allowed to function like a playwright: present at all the rehearsals, available and anxious to be the ONLY writer to address the director’s request for rewrites, and under no circumstances allowing another writer to infiltrate his creation.  Max had convinced the studio that it would work and Max being Max saw this as a warm and safe place to be with his creative energies... a substitute visit back to his first love, the theatre.  And, given Samantha had requested a time alone to get herself “together” as she called it, Max had relinquished the reins of “mentor” for as long as she felt she needed.  So, both had the same objective in mind; a gamble that their marriage might be saved by this seemingly “work” separation.

For the past few weeks Max was satisfied at his end.  His mind and longings for some deep thought, reflection and creativity had been fulfilled, even though his body had taken a punishment from the heat and long days he hadn’t anticipated.  He hadn’t heard from Samantha, though.  He wasn’t upset over that, just anxious.  They had never gone this long without communicating.  He longed for either one, Sam or Samantha. 

***

Sam had not taken lightly to the encounter Max gave her on that night some three months earlier.  After hours of challenges, both Sam and Samantha continued to deny the accusations and Max had relinquished his usual authoritative understanding of behavior to the simple perceptions of Ari.  He seemed to accept as truth, and perhaps more accurate, Ari’s take on “the woman of endless surprises” as Max had often called her.

  From Sam’s perspective, the cost of apparent truth had been high for both of them… and on this day as she sprawled on the white sand, the warmth of the fading Mexican sun trying to sooth the mental scars she was still trying to heal, perhaps the cost was even higher for herself.   Why were the events of that day so unrelenting?  Why had she been compelled to drive the hundreds of miles to this desolate patch of life to revisit the impressions that lingered so intensely, and why was she still here, ninety-three days after coming. 

These were the kind of questions she feared might never go away.  As the Mexican sun faded from the horizon, she flashed once again on the twenty-four hours she had remained in her bedroom after the arguments with her agent, her publicist and finally a bout with the writer.  She had felt spent and purged of a lot of baggage even Max had never uncovered.  But the aftermath had left her exhausted and feeling like a trapped creature, a tiny thing, so tiny in fact, that the feel of the bed covers were a tidal wave in proportion as she bolted awake from time to time, her tired eyes faced with the folds of white sheets that seemed to undulate like fifty foot high swells, pounding her further awake, subsiding only as she dived beneath and buried herself at the bottom… the bottom of everywhere and nowhere. 

That’s how she remembered over and over again the twenty-four hours… precipitated by a less enjoyable form of escape than she was unaccustomed to; straight shots of Jack Daniels.  She would have preferred slumbering off with her usual “bubbly,” had the cabinet not been void of the luxury.  On that day, however, she had ruled out a trip to the liquor store.  She had determined the self-inflicted judgment on herself would be swift and painless.  That last memory, the caramel tinted punishment trickling down her throat like broken steel, returned too often, she thought.  The ravaging of the delicate pool of tears gathering at the bottom from the drowning soul of the tiny child that cowered in the corners of that everywhere and nowhere... had begun convulsing.  That last memory had revisited her continually as she drove the distance back to the Mexican shoreline, followed by the helicopter ride to the Island of miniature castles, and finally the dusty road leading to what she hoped would be the continued opening of a door she had begun to discover only a few short months before.

In reality, the door wasn’t much of a door.  Now that it was winter, it was kept closed, warding off the ocean breezes and rains that continued to weather the planked entrance to the room that Samantha couldn’t forget… the place where first she met Sailor and his books and his tea and the stories of his beloved ocean with his friends the dolphins and of the pictures that only a blind man could appreciate… the sound of colors, shapes and textures. 

“Yes,” he said as he poured his signature tea, “I once understood things as most do… with eyes and the other four senses.  But… oh, I’m sorry, did you wish to have some more?”  Samantha smiled, “Oh, yes…yes… your tea … but don’t lose your thought.” 

Sailor poured, lifting the pot just as it filled her cup.  Samantha smiled and shook her head in silence at his deft accuracy.  “My thought… oh, yes, the senses…”  He placed the kettle back on the pop bellied stove and sat down once again on one of the coiled ropes that served his seating needs.  Samantha rocked slowly in the hammock that Sailor insisted she make herself at home on.  Her feet dangled just above the dirt floor, giving her a sense of little girl innocence as she listened to the wisdom of the man that had planted the seed that had started her thinking about what she was really doing with this part of her life...  the part that longed to be shared with others, but not from a stage or a screen.

***

His words were constant companions through the days and nights that followed.  Samantha drove back up the coast and turned off onto the rutted road that led down to the hovel of cinderblock and tin-roof covering called home to the poverty-stricken family she had met just a few months before, the family that had left her confused and wondering what her own impoverished soul was really all about.  On this return visit, she had spent days with the children, nights with her lonely self and many hours with the shoreline watching the gentle tides wash ashore and recede, wash ashore and recede.  Crouched with her head upon folded knees, she drifted back from the memories that would not go away. 

***

As the distant voices of Juanita and Julia beckoned, “Lunch Miss Samantha, lunch is ready!”  Samantha rose.  “I’m coming,” she answered, “I’m coming.”  For some inexplicable reason, this had been an especially trying morning and she felt little strength as she began to wander back.  Perhaps it had been the sudden cooler temperature change as fall approached that had left her feeling stiff and warn.  Maybe the cumulative effect of being away from Max, from Ari, from her many admirers, but as she left the dissipating fog beginning its mid-day lift, she muttered, “You stay here.  Leave me alone for just a little while… please.” 

She walked the short distance from the rocky cove to the make-shift house focused on the smoke rising from the open-pit fire.  With it came the smell of freshly cooked fish.  She smiled to herself as Salvador, Antonio and Julia scurried about laying out the grass mats that served as seating for the simple lunches of fish, flat bread and occasional vegetable when Antonio’s selling of jewelry realized a good day.   In the doorway to the shack the parentless family called home stood Francisca, holding her book, anxious for lunch to be over, looking forward to her daily reading lesson from the “angel” that had first visited them months earlier and who now she hoped would never leave.