Adulation (41 page)

He especially liked the Long Island depicted in the story. He would live on
 
that
 
Long Island.

After landing, he went straight from LAX to his office, where Dez greeted him with, “Oh, don’ttell me. Geez, can’t you two stay together for like two seconds?”

Danny peered at her over his sunglasses and nonverbally communicated,
 
Don’t.

“Mike Nichols wants to talk to you about a book he bought that he wants you to do the script for. Might get you out of the slump you’ve been in.”

Danny paused to consider this as he thumbed through the mail that had been waiting patiently on his desk. “Did you set up a meeting?”

“I thought you’d want to call him yourself,” she answered.

“Good thinking. OK, I’ll do that. Thanks, Dez.”

She closed the door behind her and Danny plopped into his chair, a strange combination of jitters and fatigue overtaking him. He hadn’t had a cigarette since throwing out the pack in the Hamptons but had drunk two cups of coffee on the plane. He called Jackson first, who asked Danny if he wanted to comment on whether he and Charlene had broken up for good.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake—don’t even tell me it’s on the Internet already. How did they get it so fast?”

“You mean they’re
 
right
?” said Jackson. “Geezus.”

“No comment,” replied Danny.

Jackson proceeded to discuss the book tour. “You start in the Northeast, just like you requested. At least three stores on Long Island. One in the city. New Jersey, Connecticut...”

As Jackson spoke, Danny was on Twitter and scrolling through Sunny’s last dozen or so tweets, a mix of self-promotion, responses to fellow tweeters, and factoids about Long Island. Listed with her bio was a URL for a personal website. He clicked on the link, perused the site (sparse in content with an “Under Construction” sign on it), and found another link to an e-mail account.

He took in a breath. He finally had a direct line to Sunny, an opportunity to contact her, apologize, say whatever he wanted to say.

“Are you listening to me?” said Jackson.

“No, I’m not,” he confessed. “Sorry. Look, this was a dumb idea. Maybe we should forget the whole thing.”

“Are you kidding?” said Jackson. “You can’t just up and cancel on everyone. Besides, it’ll be great. You get to talk about the Oscars, drum up DVD sales for all your work—although I imagine they’ve already skyrocketed thanks to your win.”

Dread churned with the coffee in his stomach.

“I guess you’re right. Well, thanks for everything, Jackson. And so help me, if you comment on me and Charlene, I’ll kill you and eat your liver for dinner.” He said good-bye and hung up the phone and went to the next call, and the next. From there he moved on to snail mail, and then back to the Internet. He opened his e-mail account and pasted in Sunny’s e-mail address.

But he couldn’t think of a single word. Became completely paralyzed.

“Forget it,” he said out loud.
 
It’s over.
 
Do the book tour and move on.

He canceled the e-mail and returned to his in-box. When he scrolled halfway down, he stiffened when the name of a sender and subject heading caught his attention.

He opened it and began to read:

Dear Danny,

I hope this e-mail finds you well. I know this comes a little late, but I wanted to congratulateyou on your recent success. I saw Exposed and thought it was really good. I also watched you win theaward, and I was very happy for you.

I’m getting ready to graduate from UCLA in June, and although I know there’s no chance youcan attend my graduation (my parents would have a fit if they even knew I was writing this, much lesswere I to invite you to my graduation), I was wondering if we could meet somewhere, even just forcoffee. I can’t really explain why, but I feel like I need some kind of closure.

If it’s not something you want, then I understand. I know how busy you must be, and I’m surethe last thing you want to do is dig up something from your past. But if you do, then name a date, time,and place, and I’ll make sure I’m there.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,

Teresa Flowers

He didn’t even realize that he’d been holding his breath as he read until his lungs prodded him with acough as a reminder. He wiped sweat from his brow and pushed his hair back and stood up and did twonervous laps around his office.

Holy shit.

He sat at his desk again and reread the e-mail. Then he got up and did two more laps around theoffice before sitting at his desk again. He picked up the phone and dialed Raj’s personal number.

“Are you free? I mean, do you have clients today?”

“I’m working from home.”

“Can you see me now? Please? It’s an emergency.”

“Of course, Daniel. Shall I come to your office?”

“No, I’ll come to you. I’m leaving now.” He hung up the phone, stormed out of the office withouttelling Dez where he was going, and sped to Raj’s house, where Raj was patiently and peacefully waitingfor him, his home office decorated almost exactly the same as his other office. Danny wouldn’t sit down;rather, he resumed his frantic pacing.

“Please, sit and tell me what’s troubling you,” said Raj.

“Oh God, Raj, I need a smoke so bad. I haven’t had one since—” He cut himself short.

“You quit smoking?”

“Yeah, but that’s not why I’m here. She wants to see me, Raj.”

“Who wants to see you?”

“Teresa! The little girl I hit the night of the accident. Only she’s not a little girl anymore—she’sgraduating
 
college
! Can you believe that?”

“I think it’s wonderful.”

“It’s not wonderful, it’s terrifying! How can I face her after what I did to her and her family? And besides, I’m not supposed to face her. I mean, I was ordered to stay away from her. It was a condition of my plea bargain.”

“But she contacted you, Daniel. Obviously she wants to see you.”

“She said she wants closure.”

“It can be closure for you too. This is an opportunity for you to finally free yourself from this chain that has bound you for the last fifteen years, the one thing that’s been holding you back from living a life of true greatness. One that has nothing to do with money or power or awards.”

Danny asked for a glass of water, and Raj brought it to him. He chugged it like a beer.

“I broke up with Charlene this past weekend,” he said.

Raj sat still, not even a hint of reaction registering on his face. “That couldn’t have been easy for

you.”

“I wasn’t planning it—in fact, I had invited her out to the Hamptons as a way to make amends and start over. But then, I don’t know—it just became clear to me that it was futile. She’s not the one I want.”

“Who do you want?”

He forced himself to say her name, out loud. “Sunny. I know that’s crazy to want someone you only talked to for five minutes, and one who called you a failure at that. But I can’t stop thinking about her, and

now it turns out she has these novels, and I’m reading them and they’re really good and all I want to do is

see
 
her again. I just want to say her name and have her respond.” He was speaking so quickly, barely pausing to take a breath. “And I have her e-mail address now, Raj. I finally have that chance, and I can’t bring myself to do it.”

Danny finally stopped speaking and impatiently waited for Raj to respond.

“Say something,” Danny commanded.

“I wanted to make sure you were finished.”

“For fuck’s sake, Raj...”

Raj smiled. “Daniel, don’t you see? It’s happening.”

Danny’s head was too clouded to think straight. “What’s happening?”

“You can’t bring a new sofa into your living room until you take the old one away. And since you’re taking the old sofa out, you might as well take out the chairs and the lamps too. Especially since the lamps haven’t been working for years.”

“What, you’re a fucking decorator now?”

Raj laughed. “Relax, my friend. Take a deep breath.”

Danny did as instructed.

“You’re clearing your own path,” said Raj. “Or at least you’ve started to. The moment you made a decision to let go of Charlene, the moment you accepted that she could no longer give you what you truly want, you opened the door for the universe to bring it to you. But you need to clear everything that’s been holding you back. The universe knows this, Daniel.”

He looked at Raj pleadingly. “I want to believe you.”

“What stops you?”

For the first time, Danny leaned back in the seat, finally stopping the barrage of anxiety swirling inside him. He stared past Raj, desperately searching for an answer. Tears rolled down his eyes.

“My fucking father.”

Raj pulled his chair close enough to Danny for their knees to touch. He put his face up close to Danny’s, forcing Danny to look at him.

“Daniel Gold, your father can’t hurt you anymore. Do you know why?”

Danny shook his head, feeling like a child as he sobbed and tried to avert Raj’s intensity.

“Because you have the power to change the way you
 
think
. A man can be beaten and belittled. He can be tortured and taunted. A man can have everything stripped of him
 
except
 
his power to choose his thoughts. All these years, you’ve
 
chosen
 
to listen to your father. You’ve chosen to think that all those things he said to you were true. But you’ve never chosen not to believe him. You’ve spent your whole life trying to
prove
 
him wrong, but you’ve never chosen to
 
believe
 
he was wrong. And he was, Daniel. He was one hundred percent wrong about you. As is everything you’ve believed about yourself since.”

The fog in Danny’s head began to dissolve, as if Raj’s words were cutting through them like sunbeams. The concept simultaneously reeked of simplicity and magnitude.

“Raj, that day Sunny called me a failure—why do you think she said it? Of all the things to call

me.”

“Because she looked in your eyes and saw your deepest fear.”

“So why don’t I hate her the way I hate him?”

“Because you looked in her eyes and saw her deepest fear too. And here’s the thing, Daniel: The things we fear most about ourselves are usually the things that make us most lovable. But we’ve got to love ourselves. Your father hated himself so much that there was no room for your love. Do you know what saved
 
you
 
from going down that same road?”

Again Danny shook his head.

“Ella,” said Raj. “She’s the one part of you that you’ve always believed in. But even she can’t

love you enough to erase all those thoughts you have about your being a failure. But that’s all they are, Daniel—
thoughts
. They can be
 
changed
.”

Raj pushed his chair away to give Danny space again.

And suddenly Danny understood. Ella had saved him the night of the accident, when he had planned to kill himself if Teresa didn’t live. And when Ella was born, he knew; he
 
knew
 
he was going to give her the best of him. And in order for him to do that, he had to find it within himself every day. And somehow, he always did.

That meant he had to believe it was there to begin with.

As long as he had Ella, there was no way he could be a failure. Not in
 
that
 
way.

He had failed the day of the premiere. He had failed to be who he really was. He was so busy being Danny Masters for the crowd—for Sunny, even—that he had ignored Daniel Gold, who had just met this wonderful woman and wanted to know who she was.

Maybe that was who he was trying to find when he drove back to his neighborhood, drunk, fifteen years ago. Maybe that was why Charlene never could be the one for him. She loved Danny Masters, not Daniel Gold. And although he had tried to be Daniel Gold for Frannie, by then it was too late—he’d already lost too much of himself. Sold it to pay for Danny Masters’s adulation.

He stood up and embraced his friend, his face streaked with salty tears. And when he let go and looked into Raj’s eyes, he noticed for the first time why he loved his friend so much.

Raj saw the real him. And loved him for it.

Danny couldn’t help but break into a smile. He took a deep breath.

“You’re still a quack,” he said.

Raj returned the smile. “And you are my favorite writer.”