Excerpt
Episode One
Where a young A-listed movie star encounters more than himself in his reflection and discovers he might not be alone in his hotel room.
1
A thin membrane separates the reality of the many worlds we regard as the universe — the whole of life and creation. But most folk are single-worlders because most folk are destined to one life and one world — no more, and sometimes less. Occasionally, in momentary flashes, the one dimension folk sense the stalkers from other-worlds — a bridge glimpsed but never crossed. But sometimes that which is beyond us, desires and beckons us apart from the mere trickle of wishes — forces which command the web between the seen and unseen, demanding a few selected souls cross between the worlds. This is when the mirror reflects more than a self-image. This is the shiver at midnight. This is the break between the dawn and the day.
2
“I’m a star,” he whispered to the young man in the mirror. “A star,” and then chuckled as he thought about a giant gas ball, ignorantly fixing planets in orbit for no other reason but gravity.
Harris Cartwright, born nineteen years earlier and christened Humphrey Kopfstutter, smiled dimly in the mirror — dimly, because the hotel room shone in upscaled amber ambience — flattering light designed to be so. Still, in any light, this star of stage and screen was the picture of Narcissus, although sometimes tamed by his reflection.
Harris moistened his bottom lip with his upper, and then winked. He shrugged, and then preened, coming close to his reflection, nearly kissing the glass. He laughed, grin exposing a brilliant smile, a gap between his two front teeth — a chasm his mother meant to have corrected when he had landed his first role as a wee urchin in a Dickens remake. However, the gap and his alluring eyes kept the roles coming until . . . well, until adolescence leaped the gulf between child actor and teen idol, which he accomplished without scandal, drugs or an arrest record. Now Harris leaped a second gulf — youthful high school parts to the dashing heroes.
He winked again, and then turned about on the stool. This hotel could accomodate a range of actors from A-list to C, now that the Tribeca Film Festival had rolled into town. The SoHo Grand, the classiest bed roll in this lower Manhattan neighborhood, had no vacancies this weekend.
Harris stood, and then stretched. He had slept the day away and, now as evening hugged the New York skyline, he was up for nocturnal festivities — a sneak preview of his new film The Magic Planet to be followed by a Q&A panel and light refreshments. Who knew what would come after that? These junkets, regulated to a point, still burst like fireworks when the rocket spent. Harris might take an evening romp with his co-star. The prospects loomed, so Harris stretched, chucked his underwear, and then headed for the shower.
3
The hotel room shimmered. All that wasn’t silk, was satin. When not occupied by a nineteen-year old A-listed actor, the king size bed wore an olive satin spread, seagreen silk sheets, a princely counterpane and stately pillows. Now the bedding was tossed as if cats had fought in a sack. Clothes were strewn on the floor, a trail from dresser to bed, from bed to shower. Books and scripts kiltered on the dressing table, and the telephone directory sprawled beside a tray with last night’s room service caking in partnership with this morning’s breakfast. No lunch — evidently.
The shower room opened directly into the boudoir, a glass panel separating it from a minibar. To Harris, the steaming water would be his wake-up call. He wasn’t sure of the time (and he didn’t worry, because Tony monitored those details). However, his schedule would kick in eventually. It always did on publicity junkets. Soon, a flock of studio bullies, who, as well-meaning as they pretended to be, would restrict his freedom. They were the paycheck, after all, and who was he?
“I’m a star,” he gurgled, spitting out a mouthful. He laughed again, the stream plastering his curly hair into a black slick. He shook the cascades from his eyes and laughed again, and then ran a soapy cloth over his newly formed biceps. His last flick demanded his body beef up from a teenage lanky noodle to a swashbuckling space pirate. He was unaccustomed to the added musculature, although the chicks dug it.
At the thought of chicks, Harris smiled, leaning against the glass wall and letting the shower permeate every pore — every crevice. Feeling giddy, his hormones having run the gamut of sexual urges and experiences lately, he resisted declaring a preference in public. Privately, he could be a weather vane, but he hadn’t time now to ponder the issue or do more than scrub his groin in this shower-call.
“Maybe later,” he mused, and then hastened to finish, turning off the taps, waiting for the steam to clear.
Harris reached for a towel — a preliminary dry, beginning with face and hair, and then creating a silly turban, which didn’t squat well on his noggin. He grabbed a second towel for his nether parts, tying this more ample terry around his waist into something akin to Pharaonic kilt.
“A star,” he said again, and then slid open the glass door.
When the room’s chill met him, he noticed something queer. On the shower door, written in the condensation — letters. He squinted, thinking he might have accidentally etched these, but he hadn’t. These were letters — clear and definite.

C U L8R C M J

“What the fuck?” he said, pawing the initials. “See you later — CMJ?”
He turned, looking for uninvited company.
“Tony?” he called. “Are you here?”
Harris inspected the room, walking over the debris, pushing linen with his feet and picking clothes up as he went. Opening the closet door, he expected to encounter Anthony Bentley-Jones, his co-star and best friend.
A joke, perhaps.
However, the closet, devoid of actors, contained only tonight’s wardrobe.
Harris threw off the turban, and then returned to the shower door, hunkering for another inspection before the initials faded. They were still clear. He tried to erase them, but they remained. He pushed back, landing on his ass.
“They’re inside. Whoever wrote this was in the fucking shower with me.”
He crabbed back to the bed, took in the room again, and then laughed.
“You’re nuts, Humphrey. Scared by a little soap scum?”
He shook his damp hair, and then sought the dryer.

Episode Two
When our actor recalls a recent memory, which weighs on his mind; and when his co-star makes a dramatic entrance, dashing all chances for reverie.
1
A little pebble thrown into a calm lake —a puzzle — can disturb the surface and throw out rings to distant shores — shores unseen — shores mental, quite unbidden in a contented reality. But contentment is never so complacent to be real. Tranquility and serenity dance a wild folk reel below the ripple. Turn quick and you will miss it. Turn slow and it will get you, perhaps to whisper in your ear and entice you away from your contentment — away from the world you thought grasped your soul and rocked your cradle. Little pebble — little pebble — strike the lake. Head turns to catch the ripple, only to hear the passing whisper calling you to the edge.
2
Again the mirror loomed. Harris dried his hair, and then inspected his cheeks for blemishes and his chin for a scar — a nick from a sword accident on the last film. It healed nicely — nothing makeup couldn’t hide, and was more pronounced two weeks ago, when he had walked the red carpet in L. A.. Tony had fussed over the scar; so much so, Harris thought Mom had tagged along. Mom wasn’t the stage door kind, but she had rules — good rules, which worked well for a child actor transitioning through this Thespian world. Mom’s rules guided Harris to regard acting as a job rather than a privilege. A good thing, because he loved his job. He hated these junkets and the crowd’s rush. The red carpet was his least favorite thing, although he was gracious to his fans and never withheld his autograph.
Harris mused on his last prance on the red carpet. Unlike tonight, a public preview at a festival, two weeks ago the event was an invitation-only première. He was tuxedified and spotlighted — the press in full attendance — interviewers great and small, each with frivolous questions like did you find the battle scenes hard? Did you perform your own stunts? We hear talk about you and Romey (Romaine Rowan — the heroine). Any truth to it?
Drone. Drone. Drone.
Harris danced around these questions. He had hugged Romaine and Tony and the director, McCann Phillips. He stood with them and posed and preened and bathed in a shower of flashbulbs and strobes behind the usual studio spoiler backdrop. It was a whirl until he saw . . . saw her — a fan, who cocked her head and grinned. She, dressed in black denim and a leather cap, unlike other fans, who stretched arms forward, pens in one hand, books in the other — this girl in black denim stood patiently, smiling confidently, and then . . . winked.
“Do you see her?” Harris whispered to Tony.
“What ya talkin’ about, mate,” Tony replied. “All I see is a sea of screamin’ Mimis, and you know not one of ‘em’s me type.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Harris said. “I mean, focus your ass and look at that one over there — the one that’s casing me.”
“They’re all casing you. I mean, who wouldn’t, you damn cutie?”
“Stop it.”
But Tony wasn’t in the mood for sightseeing. The whirl distracted him. They were the attraction. The stars. The fans, and the white noise.
White noise.
Except that one, there. That one in black stillness. Then Harris, compelled to speak with her, broke ranks, despite the push to enter the theater.
“Where ya goin’, mate?”
“Nowhere,” Harris muttered, his eyes drifting toward that wink in the crowd.
He went to the sidelines, suddenly accosted by hundreds of arms and pens and books and screaming women. They broke his reverie. He grasped one book, and then another, and yet another, signing and scribbling on demand. When he looked up, she was gone.
“Gone,” he said, now into the hotel mirror, and then pouted.
But Harris had seen her again; last week near his mother’s house in Santa Monica. While he headed to the Yatzy Club with his little sister, Harris donned his usual public disguise (thick glasses and a false nose). He encountered a gaggle of fans. Sarah, his sister, always a good shepherdess, tugged him across Santa Monica Boulevard to avoid detection. There was a time for adulation, and a time for anonymity. Harris liked the Yatzy Club because the DJ, although recognizing him, would never blow his cover.
Normality.
Crossing the boulevard, he spotted a lone wolf coming in the opposite direction.
“It’s her,” he muttered.
“Her who?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, loosening himself from his sister’s arm.
The lady wore black denim — the same outfit she had at the première. She swaggered, her head down, but she did look up when she passed Harris. She winked, her chalk-white skin amplifying crimson lips. She had a green beauty mark on her right cheek. Harris gasped — his chest hitching. But even as he turned to follow her, she hastened to the curb.
“Wait,” he called.
She didn’t. She raised a departing hand — an alluring fist wrapped in a black fingerless glove — on her finger, a captivating jade ring. Then, as if the night had swallowed her, she disappeared. Harris reached the curb.
“Do you know her?” Sarah asked. “You look . . .”
“No.” he replied. “She’s . . . How do I look?”
“Smitten, Humph. Let me fix your nose.”
They had neared the gaggle of club girls. One latex slip and Harris would be a rooster fending for his life in a henhouse. He let his sister repair his nose and straighten his thick glasses. Still, he meant to pursue the phantom lady, only . . . where did she go?
“She’s a dream now,” he said into the mirror, the hairdryer aimed at nothing in particular.
The lady in black denim — the evasive girl of the night, was no longer a reality. She stalked Harris’ dreams. He spent the afternoon trying to escape her clutches. But she lingered — on the red carpet and at the curb, winking and waving, and then coming close to his ear, her crimson lips and chalky cheeks an arabesque. Good dreams, these, but fell short of The Magic Planet. Harris had spent so much time on bizarre sets, this shade had to be a remnant hallucination from a cut scene — a snippet chastised by better reason, never to be seen through a projector’s flicker.
“You’re spoiling me,” he muttered, shutting off the dryer and nodding before his image.
A knock at the door interrupted this reverie.
3
“It’s open,” Harris shouted.
“What d’ya mean, it’s open, mate?” came a voice from the hall. “‘ow can it be open?”
Harris set the dryer down and let the towel fall, and then opened the door for his co-star.
“Well, don’t cover your nuts for me,” Tony said, bouncing in as if it were his room. “And what d’ya mean, it’s open?”
“I was testing you,” Harris replied. “And you didn’t mind me butt naked last week.”
“Well, we’ve no time for that sort of thing now. We’re late, and King McCann’ll have those balls if there’s a repeat of . . .”
“Hush up,” Harris said, without malice.
“Is your minibar stocked?” Tony asked, aiming directly for it. “Or should I ask? You sip only fizzy drinks and water, unless there’s a bloody ‘eifer up ‘ere filling jugs with chocky milk.”
“You know we have to pay for that shit.”
“You’re payin’, thank ye. Me cooler’s gone empty some ‘ow.” He shrugged, then and grinned. “Get dressed and . . .” Tony raised his hand toward the bed. “What a toss we ‘ave ‘ere? Did you ‘ave some birds in? I’m green with envy.”
“No. Nothing like that,” Harris said, pulling on his briefs and heading for the closet. “I slept . . . mostly.”
“Looks like you wrestled the queen ‘ere.”
“No, you weren’t anywhere around,” Harris replied, chuckling. “Get your drink. I’ll be ready in a shake.”
Anthony Bentley-Jones, the draw of the East end and many a rear end, bowed first to the bed, and then the minibar. He was a good egg, as they said across the pond. He was four years older than Harris, but in the biz longer, having made his first cereal commercial at age two, his Mummy hell-bent on keeping ‘erself in gin and marijuana. The Bentley-Jones franchise (which began as the Koslowsky enterprise) was not as smooth and carefree as the Cartwright-Kopfstutter dynasty. Little Antonin’s Mummy drove him from stage door to audition to rock video to TV commercial to rascal roles until, by age ten (just over a decade earlier) he was a bundle of talented nerves and molested by a string of equally talented directors. He still landed plum roles, but his decadence overshadowed many actors three times his age. However, he had his good looks and came out of the closet three years ago, with much aplomb. The rumors that he had slept with every one of his co-stars (male and female) were true, or so he told the press.
They don’t call me Bentley-Jones for nothin’, dearies.
Tony pulled the minibar door ajar and perused a choice of little bottles.
“I see the munchies ‘ave gone missin’.” He glanced at the floor. “Your aim is bleedin’ off. I ‘ope you made it to the loo better’an you did the dustbin.” He rattled through the shot bottles, putting a few in his jacket pocket. “And what’ll grace your glorious body tonight?”
“Something simple.”
Harris alluded snidely to Tony’s over-the-top outfit — very Dorsetshire — a flowery shirt beneath a blue blazer, a pink hankie mushrooming from where the yacht insignia should have been — a fedora (duck feathered – green) and, of course, an Ascot.
“Simple? Jeans and shitekickers?” Tony drawled like a Dallas native just short of Yorkshire. He turned, and then glanced over his tinted glasses at the young American. “Now that’s bloody fetchin’. Turn ‘bout and let your Auntie Antonia assess.”
Harris had donned a green silk shirt and a white jacket with matching pants. He was stunning. He knew it, but dummied down this wardrobe choice. He was more comfortable in, as Tony had stated, jeans and shitekickers. He refused to do a runway twirl for Auntie Antonia, although he had seen the runway on many a fashion week.
“Listen,” he said sternly. “I told you the judge is still out on me and the coming-out ball.”
“I ‘ate when a man can’t make up ‘is own mind,” Tony said, pouting. He held a gin sample in one hand and a Post-it in the other. “You just want the best of both worlds — and I guarantee that you’ll never get anything better ‘an me.”
“Stop it.” Harris squinted. “What’s that?”
Tony lifted the bottle.
“Gin.”
“No . . . that?”
“Oh. This was stuck inside ya minibar. Maybe a note from the mice that you ate their munchies. Stole their splif too, I bet.” He looked at the Post-it, and then frowned. “Not the mice. It’s from a secret admirer. It says,” he adjusted his glasses. “It says — I C U and C U l8r, CMJ.”
Harris shuddered. He rushed to Tony’s side, swiping the note, and then stared hard.
“You did ‘ave a bird up ‘ere in this cage today,” Tony said, fretfully. “You needn’t ‘ave lied. I mean, we’re not a couple or anything like that.”
“Nothing like that, and I didn’t have . . . a bird in this cage today.”
Tony shook his head knowingly.
“Ah, you said the door was open. So that’s ‘ow it’s done. You know in some cat ‘ouses an open door is a signal for . . .”
“Stop it. I had no one here. At least, no one that . . . Anyone could have stuck this in the fridge.”
Tony pocketed the gin and shut the minibar door with his foot.
“Keep your little secrets. Let’s just get a move on, mate. The limos’ll be lining the curb and we mustn’t keep a Rolls-Royce waitin’.”
Harris Cartwright, star of stage and screen, sighed. He glanced about his home away from home and wondered about the journey. This was the only life he knew, and now he must move along a professional course.
“You’re right,” he said. “We’re stars — giant balls of gas. Let’s go fill the galaxy with our stink.”
“Why, what’s crawled up your arse, mate?”
Harris grinned. He was the master of the moment in his green shirt and white duds. He had a Q&A to give and flashbulbs to embrace. It was illusion, but he knew no other life.