Chapter 40

The 6:05 pulled out of Greenwich and headed for Manhattan.  Morning weary passengers slogged down their coffee and began folding their Times and Journal into the standard eight-inch-long fold back, a habit that Mary Owen found humorous, given she had folded her paper that way on the subway for fifteen years prior to getting married and moving to Greenwich.  Ah, Greenwich, she reminisced many times, such a wonderful place to live.  Good schools for her three children, ample time away from her husband whose 5 AM train preceded her each morning as he made his way to Wall Street and the means by which they enjoyed Greenwich.  She also appreciated the distance between Manhattan and her home as it gave her time each morning and evening to have the only quiet time she could capture each day.  Oh, she thought, I’ve got some regrets.  Sometimes I wish I was just married and could have remained in the big apple, walked to BBD&O—the ad agency she VP’d—and lived the Bonwit Teller and Trump Tower life.  But, kids, kids, kids. 

She took a deep breath and glanced out the window, letting her eyes wander back to the old lady sitting across from her.  She folded her Times, noticing the old lady was reading The Profile.  Mary, an avid reader of all the weekly papers and rags just to keep up on the societal temporaryness, did a second take, as the picture adorning the cover was unlike any she had ever seen on any rag, let alone one of the world’s most aggressive celebrity gossip journals. 

“Excuse me,” said Mary to the woman, “but could I just see the headline on that cover?”

The woman, red hair pushed up into a bizarre swirl look, dripping lipstick and eye shadow that would challenge a circus clown, glanced over and smiled.  Her voice, that of a two pack a day waitress, bellowed softly, “Scandalous, isn’t it?  Children standing around that hussy.”

Mary, much of an actress without being professional as you’d ever meet, smiled back, “Isn’t it marvelous?”

The red head paused a moment, got it, and laughed.  “Yeah.  Yeah, it is.” 

Mary concentrated on the headline, “Samantha Crosses Border To Have Children.”  She squinted at the fine print, catching the eye of the red head once again.  “Hey, you really like this stuff like me, huh?  I’m finished, take a read.  The article is a pisser.”

Mary smiled, “I’m sure it is.  Thank you,” she said as she took the paper and offered her Times in exchange.

“Oh, no thanks,” said Miss Red like a straight arrow, “I’m trying to quit.” She gave a serious look at her reflection in the window and primped her swirldo.

Mary read with special interest, as like many New Yorkers, she too was a big fan of Samantha’s many accomplishments on Broadway and the image of the singular focused human being that had become the symbol of feminine ambition for millions.

Like Mary, other New Yorkers, Los Angelinos, Chicagoans, Floridians, even Oshkosheons, bought up the Profile issue by the thousands. 

By late day, Harrison was ordering another 200,000 copies.

*** 

Ari wandered the streets of New York that day, dropping into the places he knew the readers of The Profile frequented… people who loved to glue their eyes to the latest trash on their favorite star.  The grocery and drug store checkouts, certain delicatessens, fast food drop-ins and his favorite, the subway.  Today, however, those same haunts, those same people, those same type faces from Sutton Place to the Bronx he’d followed for years, revealed different expressions.  As he watched their studying eyes, words were sometimes mumbled, sometimes blurted out… but always with a little surprise.

“She’s flipped”

“She’s some kind of woman”

“Given up all that for this?”

“What you sayin’ boy?  That kids ain’t good?”

“Bet her husband is getting shit faced about now.”

“Bet he’s building a big fuckin’ house about now, ha, ha.”

“She must be infertile to take on a bunch a Mex’s”

“She must be somethin’ we don’t know about, is what you’re sayin’”

“They’re gonna need some big trailers for her now on those sets.”

“They’re gonna have a hard time toppin’ this issue.

***

        Later that night, Ari dropped into one of his own haunts, the Arpeggio, a small coffee house in the Village.  In the beginning of his digital explorations, he had sipped many an espresso into the night sitting in the corner with his laptop, watching, recording and interpreting the evolving impressions of the “pretty people,” as they tried to sober up after a night of partying.  It was here that he had found the stealth use of his camera could capture the innocence of a good healthy drunk, as well as fashionable patrons who would spend leisure time drinking their espressos and cappuccinos as they surreptitiously allowed the inebriated entertainment to fill their vicarious needs.  At the time, all became tests for his exploring as they appeared each night on his laptop as surreal examples of the way he chose to perceive people. 

On this night, he slumped down in the corner.  No camera.  No laptop.  Elana, the waitress that had served him for years, stepped up and asked him how he was doing.  Ari could only grin, then giggle, then laugh.

“Okay,” she said with a chuckle of her own.  “Gonna let me in on it.”

“Sure,” he answered.  He laughed once more, releasing the kind of laughter that only comes from shear pain or shear joy… no in-between.  “A snapshot,” he said.

Elana, trying to go along with him, leaned down and looked into his eyes.  “Snapshot?” 

Any expression that might have been there, now vanished from his face.

 “You been drinkin?” she asked quietly.

Ari continued starring straight ahead, out the window, past the runaway girl staring back at him from the sidewalk, past the cab driver holding at the curb for a fare to stumble into his taxi, past the street lamp that betrayed the hidden loneliness of the old lady with the shopping cart and mongrel dog at her side rummaging through the trash can, past the apartment lights and occasional snow encrusted trees and on up the 6^th Ave canyon toward the Profile building and its prominent logo atop the 38^th floor.

Ari rose, dropped some bills for Elana and once again uttered, “snapshot.”  He walked out, crossed the street and headed up 6^th Ave.

Elana shook her head, leaned down to pick up her tip and give the table a quick wipe.   She had witnessed the evolution of an artist on that bench in the corner, had fed him coffee for years, had shared many more outrageous moments than this with the brooding photographer.  So, to her, it was just another “one of those moments.”  Then her eye caught a copy of the Profile resting on the seat where Ari had sat.  She picked it up, noticing the picture of Samantha and the children.  As she looked closer, she saw that the picture had been lightly penciled over with several layers of other Samantha images.  On closer look, the images of Samantha’s dark side as only Ari and Max new it, startled her.  As she looked up and out the window, Ari was nowhere in sight.

***

For Max, sleeping on a bus, even with the fancy reclining seats, was not helping his exhaustion.  Forty-three days of shooting in the desert had left him fifteen pounds lighter, worn out, and anxious to get home and climb into some clean white sheets for what he wished could be a three-month hibernation.  But, unlike other creatures of survival, Max wasn’t about to get a long winter rest.  As the bus navigated off the highway and over some railroad tracks to pull into the twenty-four-hour diner, he awoke from his half asleep stupor and gazed out the window at the green neon sign proclaiming “Harry’s Place – Fine Food.”

“C’mon, Max,” said Marsha, his Continuity Assistant, “Last chance for ‘fine food’ for at least six hours”

Max squinted at his watch.  Two-Thirty.  “Who the hell needs food at this hour?” he mumbled.

Marsha continued toward the door along with the other crew members.  “Oh, about three busloads of drunks.”

Max pulled himself up.  “Christ, I just want to get home.”

“You should have taken the studio provided limo home.”

“So, I got a case of political correctness and came with you guys.”

Marsha grinned.  “Shouldn’t have forced them all to have such a good time.  Wrap parties always end up makin’ the animals hungry.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Max grinned as he threw his arm around the Production Designer.  “You gonna let Marsha call you an animal, Kunz?”

The big guy took a deep breath.  “Shit, yes, long as they got meat inside.”

“I’m sure they do,” answered Max, popping a stick of gum in his mouth, “but I wouldn’t attest to what kind.”  

“Ah, diners,” Max reminisced as he stepped into the tarnished walls of an age never to be seen again… unless, of course, “you’re fortunate to have a bus load of hungry animals,” he confessed out loud.

“Pardon?” said Marsha, caught up in her own delirium of hunger and fatigue.

As Max sauntered up to a bright red counter stool, “Oh, just thinking.”

Marsha respectfully jabbed him in the ribs, “Give it a rest, Max.  Everybody needs a rest from thinkin’ once in a while.”

“Oh… yeah.  Right.  Gotta stop bein’ that way.”

Marsha gave him a glance.  “Just thinkin’ about ya”

“Everybody needs a rest…”

“Okay,” smiled Marsha.  Got me.”  To the waitress, she said, “Burger, grilled cheese, toast, tea, and water.” 

Max hunched over the counter, peering into the 50’s jukebox satellite with its page turning uniqueness and grinned.  “If my body hasn’t got the immunity goin’ for it by this age, I’m screwed anyway… burger with everything.  You like Mathis?”

“Johnny?”

Max gave her a glance.  “Yeah… I think that’s what he went by.”

“Okay,” Marsha smiled back embarrassingly, “Sure.  Johnny Mathis… last of the ‘coulda fooled me closet guys’”.

Max spun around on his chair, “Hey, anybody here think Johnny Mathis is a fag?”

The diner erupted.  The poor waitress and cook glanced about with total confusion.  Marsha saddled up to the waitress.  “It’s Okay, just a bunch of uncouth heathens.  You and me know he was the hottest thing around, right?”

The waitress smiled, respectfully, “Yeah.  We know.  What’ll you have while they grind up your meal?”

“Water for me… and my friend here will have water with lemon.”

“Ah, c’mon,” interrupted Max, “Give the place a break.” He turned to the waitress and gave her a serious look.  “You got fresh beef for them burgers, don’t ya?”

The waitress glanced over her shoulder to the cook, “Yeah, long as the freezer keeps workin’”

“Throw together a burger… the works, fries and a Keefer.”

“A what?” asked the waitress.

“Just kidding, coke.  Just coke,” smiled Max, turning back to Marsha.

“Hungry,” smiled Marsha.

“Too much talk about food.  Gets me every time.”

As Max dipped the last French fry into the watered-down ketchup, Marsha sighed and slumped onto the counter.  “Nothing like diner poison to get your sleep back in order.”

Max glanced at her, smiled, and then glanced up at the old Philco TV recessed into the wall high above the end of the counter.  The black and white picture brought hoots from the rest of the crew as the waitress flipped the dial, coming to rest on CNN.  “Cable, folks.  Only shot at CNN for another hundred miles.”  She smiled as if she had just unveiled the Mona Lisa. 

Max’s smile turned to a sullen fix on the screen.  There was the front page of The Profile.  Max rose and stepped closer as the newscaster related the story of Samantha and the mysterious dark-skinned family of orphans.  He stood beneath the set staring up at the snapshot that had already turned the grinning heads of millions with the same utterance… “I don’t believe it.”  Max wasn’t grinning.

THREE MONTHS LATER

For Lewis, getting Harrison’s generous tickets for a Disney Cruise was just about the best thing that had ever happened to him.  As he and his family basked in the Caribbean sun atop the upper deck watching their children slide down the snake tunnel to the pool below, he could only grin.  Standing on the bridge with the captain was Hurito… he too basking, but not in the sun, in the power.  Two straight months of record breaking sales of The Profile; more fan mail than the magazine could handle; and a contract to hold Harrison to run the magazine for another 10 years was “power” enough… but when he heard that Harrison was going to be taking cabs so his driver could enjoy his vacation on the cruise, Hurito decided on a power trip even he was taken aback by.  He was so high on success now that he thought the whole company deserved a vacation, so he dropped a bundle and chartered the luxury liner for a week… bannered the May issue of the magazine with a notice “Gone fishin’ see you in June” and there they all were.  All who had worked untiringly to make the success they were all enjoying.  All the contributors.  Well, not quite all.