An Accidental Affair (4 page)

A horn blew and pulled me away from that broadcast. A new black Lincoln Town Car crept down the side of the building and pulled over. The man at the wheel turned his lights off and eased out. He was six foot two and dark as an open road. That was his description of himself. I’d steal a line from a Janis Ian song, “Society’s Child,” and say that his face was clean and shining black as night. He was bald, wore frameless glasses, expensive black suit.

I excused myself and went to Driver.

He said, “This isn’t the place I recommended. I said the Park Regency Club.”

“Well, I saw this one first and its beauty caught my eye.”

“We’re going to have to get your eyes checked, Thicke. Your mind too.”

“It’s not as nice as Park Regency Club Apartments. They have a nicer gate. But this will do. Five freeways are nearby. Food Lion and Target and Starbucks and a lot of other shopping are right up Imperial. If I decide to leave or need to clear my head, the Metro station is within walking distance. Downtown L.A. in about twenty minutes. Long Beach in about the same time.”

“Yeah. It’s not for me to question, Thicke.”

“Reminds me of my childhood.”

He repeated, “Not for me to question.”

“I know that it makes no sense to you. But at the moment it does to
me. I need the world to stop. I need the off button. I just want some time. I just want to rest and be by myself. If I can’t make it stop, maybe I’ll just go back to the days I used to sell gum and sodas on the streets.”

“No need to explain. I just follow orders and collect my check.”

I said, “You packed the whole damn cottage.”

“That one-bedroom cottage is your office. And you said to pack your office.”

“You overdid it.”

“What were your instructions?”

“To pack everything in my office.”

“Well, leave what you don’t want inside the truck and I’ll take it back.”

“It’s here now. I’ll make it work out.”

“I’m done for the day. Let me take off my coat and help.”

“One of the neighbors is helping. Looks like he’s going to see it through.”

Driver said, “Regina Baptiste didn’t return to the house.”

“I called her publicist’s office and no one would talk to me. Same for her management team. Her mom and dad haven’t heard from her and had the nerve to ask me what I had done.”

“Johnny Handsome?”

“I messed him up pretty bad.”

“Yeah. His daddy, Moses Bergstein, was being interviewed. Daddy is outraged. Word is he was a gangster when he was back east, decades ago. Johnny is the only one he sent to college. Then this acting thing jumped off and made that family like a thugged-out royal family.”

“If you hear something about Johnny, let me know. If you find him, call me. I don’t care if his old man was John Gotti or Al Capone, I would love to pick up where we left off.”

“With legerity.”

Driver took in the worn complex, then eased back inside the town car and drove away.

Mr. Holder had continued moving boxes to the edge of the truck in my short absence. Isabel watched the town car as it left the complex, then she regarded me in search of answers.

Mr. Holder asked, “Who was that?”

“He was lost. Gave him directions.”

Ten minutes later another one of the neighbors had stopped and spied inside the truck. She was in her late-twenties, breathing hard, very sweaty. She wore black workout gear, low-rise sweats, the jacket opened over her soaking-wet sports bra. She was five-ten, her hair in a ponytail that hit the middle of her back, and she held a half-empty water bottle in her left hand.

She said, “After sixteen years you’re finally moving out of this dump, Mr. Holder?”

“No, helping this young man with his belongings. Elevator is out.”

She looked at me with familiarity, and then she smiled. “Oh, hi.”

Mr. Holder said, “Varg, this is Mrs. Patrice Evans. Mrs. Evans, this is Varg Veum.”

She swallowed before she asked, “What do you do, Varg?”

I paused, thought, and then gave her eye contact. “Photographer.”

“Praise the Lord. My husband and I need a photographer. You have a card?”

“Not at the moment. My hands are full at present. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“Where’s your apartment?”

She had cornered me, and Mr. Holder knew, so I had to tell her the truth.

Then her cellular rang.

Isabel was there observing and evaluating my goods, but hadn’t said a word since Patrice had arrived. Not until then did Isabel open her mouth. She said, “Your husband is calling you, young lady. You’d
best run along because you know Ted hates for you to be gone too long.”

Patrice looked back at me. “I’ll get your card some other time, Varg.”

Mr. Holder and Isabel didn’t say anything. But they both wore frowns of disapproval.

Two hours later, when we were done, when the natives had finished shouting their threats at us, after the truck was locked up, Isabel shook my hand again. She held onto my hand, bit her lower lip then regarded me with a kind smile formed underneath suspicious eyes.

She said, “Chet tells me that you have roots abroad. In Norway, he said.”

I nodded. “Bergen.”

She backed away, told Mr. Holder goodnight and waved good-bye.

Mr. Holder stayed with me, was in no hurry to go home. We jumped in the U-Haul and I took him down to Marina del Rey to grab a middle-of-the-night bite to eat at Jerry’s Deli.

Mr. Holder told me that he was fifty, was married in his twenties, had an adult daughter. He was divorced and estranged from his only child for the last fifteen years, laid off three times, bankrupted once, and now he was trying to get back on his feet and get his life in order.

He showed me a photo of his daughter. It was a picture from fifteen years ago when she was around ten or eleven years old. She was a pretty girl in pigtails, with a wholesome face.

He said, “We’ve finally gotten back in contact with each other after over twenty years.”

“That’s great.”

“She’s getting married, so she tells me. She said she’s going to come out here to meet me so we can get reacquainted. Said she wants me to be in her wedding and walk with her.”

Two police officers came inside the diner and sat next to two beautiful Central American girls who were seated in the rear of the place. I tensed and lowered my head.

Mr. Holder asked, “You scared of the police? What’s going on?”

Again enraged, I massaged my temples. “You have time for a long conversation?”

He nodded.

While we ate, I told him who I was. I told Mr. Holder my real name. It had only been a few hours, but being Varg Veum was already too hard. I told him more about my wife. About the situation. About the screenplay. Mr. Holder sat across from me mouth open, speechless.

He nodded. “Can you sue?”

“I’ll probably get sued for attacking Johnny Handsome.”

“Johnny Handsome?”

“Johnny Bergs. You probably know him as Johnny Bergs.”

“I own a lot of his movies. You serious? That’s who your wife had an affair with?”

He had called it an affair. I didn’t know what to call what had happened. It was ridicule.

I didn’t say anything. I wished that I could have taken back what I had already said.

He said, “So you’re running.”

“I’m not running. Only the guilty run. And my wife has run. She’s logged on to our Expedia account and booked a one-way ticket to the Netherlands, to Amsterdam. She went someplace where not many would recognize her face.”

“Hell, go on the talk shows. That’s what you Hollywood people do. Go on the attack. Tell them what your wife did. Get that political spin and make it work in your favor.”

“It does a man no good to attack a woman, no matter how wrong she is.”

“You left without saying a word in your own defense. They’re going to say that you ran.”

“They’re going to say all kinds of things. That’s what the tabloids
do. I’m sure that Johnny Handsome will have a great spin for this. Regina is probably working on hers too.”

Mr. Holder’s cellular rang. He took the call, said that he was out with a friend and he’d be back home in a couple of hours. Then he closed his phone and sipped his coffee.

I asked, “That was your wife?”

He smiled. “No, I have a girlfriend. She lives with me.”

“Didn’t mean to pull you away.”

“I needed a break.”

Outside, the darkness was losing its edge, sunrise impending, and I shifted in my seat.

He asked, “How are you feeling?”

“I’m numb one moment, like now, and the next I’m out of control.”

“In too much pain to feel, then you feel too much pain to think straight.”

I nodded. “Sounds like you can relate.”

“Living with Kerri-Anne did have its good moments, but those moments of quiet were like the one-minute rest between three-minute rounds.”

“Kerri-Anne?”

“My daughter’s mother’s name was Kerri-Anne. Now I’m shacking up with a Vera-Anne.”

Another moment slipped by. He told me that when he was young, around my age, he had been very arrogant, but confessed that he had been chastened by life’s hardships and was now more cognizant of his own failings and weaknesses. Over the last few hours, I had been humbled too.

Misery loved company. Mr. Chetwyn Holder was a good man and good company.

I said, “Mrs. Evans said that you’ve been living at The Apartments for sixteen years.”

“A lion has to be in the jungle in order to exist. A lion understands
the jungle. It understands the hunt. You take a lion and drop him off in the suburbs, away from his wilderness, and he has no idea how to survive. Most of the people in this complex, this is their jungle.”

“There’s only one world, Mr. Holder. Only one jungle.”

Mr. Holder said, “The guy in the suit, who was he?”

“An employee of mine. He’s my driver.”

“Your chauffeur?”

“You could call him that, yeah. But I just call him my driver. It’s not that serious.”

He nodded and had an expression on his face that was hard to read.

I said, “I need another favor, if I’m not asking too much.”

“What you need?”

“I need to take the U-Haul back up by Hollywood and Vermont, then pick up my car.”

“You sound nervous about that. What kind of car you drive?”

I smiled a thin smile. “The kind I don’t want anyone seeing me drive.”

Televisions were on in the diner. It was the late-night recap of all of the late shows. My humiliation was a running joke on
TMZ
,
Letterman
, Leno, Kimmel,
The
Colbert
Report
,
The
Daily
Show
, and a dozen other shows that chastised the ups and mocked the downs of those living in Hollywoodland. Regina Baptiste was getting her fifteen minutes of fame, was being talked about, laughed about, was being made infamous and lauded in one punch line. Johnny Handsome was called a stud muffin. It would do wonders for his image. When a man looked that good, they all wanted to fuck him and reproduce. That was the joke that women on shows like
The View
told. Fucking the handsome man. Trading up and finding a better spot in the DNA pool. Pretty babies. My wife was sullied and I was the Jennifer Aniston of this joke. I was the also-ran in this nightmare. My life’s pain was being played out by others, the fodder of jokes and punch lines. Anger rising, I looked around the sparsely populated diner to see if anyone recognized me.

Again, on the television a comedienne was being spotlighted for her crass wittiness.

Could you see that in a prison scene? Johnny Bergs confronting Greg Brady in the prison yard; next scene, Greg Brady making sweet love to Johnny Bergs like he’s on the bottoms end of
Brokeback Mountain?

The audience exploded with laughter then applauded the mean-spirited joke.

She had cleaned her act up for television. Yesterday I had heard the uncensored version of the same routine. It pissed me off. At least I wasn’t seen as Greg Brady in that joke.

I took care of the bill. Mr. Holder insisted on leaving the tip. And then we headed back for the U-Haul. The air was brisk. The dark skies were struggling to become a brand new day.

Once inside the U-Haul Mr. Holder looked up at the ominous sky and said, “Good thing you moved in tonight. The storm break is ending. It’s supposed to rain again all day tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Another storm is on the way.”

I said that, and then I looked at the swollen knuckles and my scarred hand.

I wish that I could’ve recorded the priceless look on Johnny’s face when the crowbar shattered his driver side window. By the time he realized what was going on, by the time he’d recovered from that surprise, I’d already pulled him out of his sports car. If his seatbelt had been on, then I wouldn’t have been able to get to him. But Bad Boy Johnny never buckled up.

I dragged him to the pavement, grunted and as cars blew their horns, and as a cold, cold rain fell on us, I pummeled his face. I pounded him until I had to stop for air. Then I took a deep breath and left him doubled over and bleeding as I picked up the crowbar. Johnny had scampered and made it to his feet and took off running blindly through late-night traffic.

As I stood fuming, in a state of high indignation, I should’ve shot him right then.

We were surrounded by two-story electronic billboards that lit up the night advertising for Johnny’s next movie with Lionsgate. JOHNNY BERGS. JOHNNY BERGS. JOHNNY BERGS. Everywhere I looked, on the sides of buses, on movie marquees, and on billboards I saw the face and name JOHNNY BERGS. As traffic stacked up on Sunset, as horns blew, as people held up cellular phones and recorded, I rushed inside my Maybach and sped away.

* * *

That film was sent to my cellular. It fucked me up beyond repair. As I stood frozen inside of my shopworn apartment, as I became a statue surrounded by boxes and furniture that was placed haphazardly, I saw the images from that film clip in my mind. It had been on loop for endless hours. It was like I was on set, sitting in a twenty-foot-high director’s chair, script in hand.