Adulation (46 page)

“I need to get out of here, Frannie.”

She looked defeated and looked at Ella helplessly. “What about Richie?”

Danny grimaced; leave it to Frannie to play the boyfriend card.

“Weren’t you the one telling me to slow down with Richie, like, a month ago?” said Ella.

Bless you
, he thought.

As if waving a flag of surrender, Frannie raised her hands and dropped them, shaking her head twice. “I guess your mind’s made up,” she said, and she took her daughter into her arms and held her close.

“Thank you, Mom,” said Ella in a muffled voice.

After a few minutes, Frannie released her daughter and gave Danny a threatening look. “If I find out you’re gallivanting all over the place and leaving her home alone at night...”

Danny took a step back and raised his right hand. “I swear to you on my Oscar, I’m gonna take care of her.”

And upon hearing that, Frannie gave her blessing. Ella let out a piercing scream and hugged them one at a time before rushing away to text her friends. He waited for the ringing in his ears to cease before saying to Frannie, “I don’t know, do you think she’s happy?” and then raised his eyebrows in Groucho Marx fashion. Frannie was not charmed. He put his arm around her one final time. “Don’t worry, hon.” He hadn’t called her that since they were married. “She’s awesome, and she’s going to be OK. Better than OK. She’s going to be great. She’s a lot less like me than you think.”

“Being you isn’t such a bad thing, Danny.”

For the first time ever in his life, he agreed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Sunny Smith

M
Y APARTMENT WAS
 
beginning to resemble the Whitford’s stockroom—shipping boxes occupied everyroom, each set coded by different-colored Sharpie pens, filled with the artifacts of my life: vinyl records, DVD sets of
 
Winters in Hyannis
 
and my Cary Grant and John Hughes collections, winter clothes andsnow boots, and shoeboxes full of letters and keepsakes and ticket stubs from just about every concert I’dever attended. For every two boxes I’d packed, I filled one with stuff to give away—namely all but twoof my hoodies, assorted pairs of shoes and tops that had gotten no more than two wears in their lifetimes,housewares that had been wedding gifts for Teddy and me that I’d never used, and dinosaur computerparts.

Forty years compacted between slabs of cardboard and bubble wrap. And I’d barely even made a

dent.

Georgie and Marcus weren’t leaving until June, but they were thrilled that their apartment wascoming into my hands, as was I. It was definitely a step up for me; the last writing space I’d had was inthe house I shared with Teddy, and he had always made it clear that it would be given up in no time if wehad more than two kids—no  sharing rooms for his offspring, which I had thought was ridiculous. Nevertheless, I was already decorating my new space in my mind’s eye, collecting paint swatches anddusting off my writing desk.

My plan was to move into the new apartment, live off my royalties for at least six months, thenevaluate whether it was feasible to go another six months. I’d already put together a strict budget, makingsure to put money aside both for a house and a retirement fund. Phil assured me that there would alwaysbe a place for me at Whitford’s should I need to return.

“But what if there is no more Whitford’s?” I asked. I bit my tongue a second later when I realized Imight have gotten Josh in trouble for revealing to me information about the company’s status, but Phildidn’t indicate such.

“One way or another, we’ll always look out for you,” he said.

I was glad to have the safety net. And yet I knew that I would never return to Whitford’s. At leastnot as an employee. It was like moving out of your parents’ house for good. And starting over wasn’tgoing to be easy by any means, but at least it was finally on my own terms.

I had a new mystery novel idea and couldn’t wait to get going on it, already making charactersketches and lists of names, and jotting down what ifs. But when
 
The Danny Masters Best
 
script booksarrived and I put one aside for myself and thumbed through it, I found myself thinking that the novel ideacould work better as a movie. Although I’d never written a script before, I’d toyed with the idea of takinga screenwriting course back when I’d first become obsessed with
 
Winters in Hyannis
 
. However,screenwriting had always seemed to be a different beast from novel writing. More daunting, in a way. Butafter reading the opening scene of
Exposed
 
during my lunch break, it occurred to me that I had a goodteacher sitting right in front of me.

Everything was in place. Well, almost everything.

At least I finally knew what I was going to say to Danny Masters when I met him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Danny Masters

D
ESPITE HAVING BROKEN
 
up with Charlene and being on the road and away from Ella yet again, Dannycouldn’t remember the last time he had felt this giddy. Ever since his meeting with Teresa, he’d felt as ifhe had a new lease on life, a second chance. For the first time ever, the Incident was behind him—in fact,it was no longer “the Incident” with a capital
 
I
, but simply “the accident.” He’d always refused to refer toit as such because accidents were typically something beyond one’s control, unintentional. Certainly hehad never intended to hurt anyone, but it had been preventable. He didn’t have to get in the car that night.

Better yet, he was writing again. When he’d spoken to Mike Nichols about the adaptation project, Danny had proposed to obtain the rights to
 
Long Island Ducks
 
and adapt that as well, and Nichols agreedto consider it. Not only was he writing, but he also couldn’t keep up with the deluge of words. Hescrawled things down on scraps of paper when he didn’t have an electronic implement handy. He talkedinto the voice recorder on his iPhone while jogging or driving. He rushed out of the shower, dripping wet,to jot down a snippet of dialogue. Sunny’s  book was coming alive, and he wished he could show it to her. The writing hadn’t been this fluid since his first draft of
Exposed
. Even most
 
Winters in Hyannis
 
scriptshad been arduous labor, and that was with a writing staff to assist him. Moreover, he didn’t find himselfsecond-guessing every scene, every transition, every exchange between protagonist and antagonist. Hewasn’t worrying about whether it was good, whether
 
he
 
was good. He was simply immersed in theprocess, feeling something akin to a runner’s high, where the destination wasn’t nearly as much fun as therunning itself.

And yet he still went frigid every time he tried to compose a letter to Sunny.

The book tour had been going well so far. He’d been to six bookstores in as many days, in New Jersey and Manhattan, and although there was no sign of Sunny, he found himself eager to meet eachperson and sign every book with the hope that she would appear and he would recognize her. In all thegoogling he’d done, nothing revealed where she worked, whether she was still a bookstore employee, orliving in New York. But he’d scripted every scenario possible, ranging from Sunny going postal andopening fire in the middle of someone asking him if there was going to be a
 
Winters in Hyannis
 
movie forthe umpteenth time (although Danny had imagined doing it himself in response to that question) to Sunnyshowing up and introducing Danny to the goon that had interrupted them outside the theater (
We’replanning a June wedding...
 
) to Danny breaking into a cheesy courtroom confession:
 
Yes, I’m guilty. I’mguilty of being a jackass in the first degree.
 
This temptation was especially strong when, in some  stores,fans actually called him
jackass
 
as an affectionate moniker, part of a cheer. One day he’d look back on itand embrace it tongue-in-cheek, he thought, the way much of the Brat Pack did twenty-five years after firstbeing labeled the Brat Pack. But for now, the word conjured the visual equivalent of a fork scratching aplate.

Nevertheless, he politely laughed it off and let the fans pose with him for photos and thanked themall for coming.

After two more signings in Connecticut and a fear that carpal tunnel syndrome was setting in from

writing his name and shaking hands so many times (Purell was the crack of hand sanitizers, he’d decided), Danny was starting to lose hope that Sunny would show.

He could still e-mail her, he reminded himself. Or send a tweet. But what could he say, especially in a medium designed to be so casual, even though so many times it was anything but? He didn’t know how to go beyond mere conventional apologies or make amends without sounding like the recovering alcoholic he was. He didn’t know how to articulate what he felt because he couldn’t identify the feeling.

He didn’t know what story to tell.

Even if he did meet her in person, he still wouldn’t know what to say. But at least then he wouldn’t be clamoring for the perfection. No, this time he’d opt for being human.

Long Island was next. He was going to visit three stores: Book Hampton on Main Street in Sag Harbor, Barnes & Noble in Lake Grove, and Whitford’s Books & Café in Huntington Village. While on the island Danny hoped to do some additional house-hunting as well as visit some of the locations Sunny referred to in her novel. She  had obviously done a lot of research; and although her novels were set in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, respectively, he thought it would be fun to visit the towns and see what stood where, perhaps even take some snapshots. He liked the idea of getting to know his home all over again, to see it in a way he’d never seen it before. It simultaneously felt both new and familiar.

The Book Hampton gig brought out the East End crowd, including Alan Alda and Jules Feiffer. The Barnes & Noble signing lasted until well past midnight, there were so many people.

But still no Sunny.

He had a day off between the Barnes & Noble and the Whitford’s Books & Café gigs and spent it in the city, writing. He’d decided to use his apartment at the Plaza as the hub for the tour, and although it sometimes resulted in exhaustive travel, having the same place to come back to each night without the need to check in and check out made life much easier. Dez had flown out for a couple of days at Danny’s request; most of the tasks could’ve been done long distance, but Danny sensed she already knew that the real reason he’d summoned her to the East Coast was because he was lonely—once he’d signed every book, smiled for every photo, answered every question, he went back to a well-decorated emptiness that Charlene was no longer around to fill. Ella was too busy with school for him to call or for her to stay with him. And although many of his fans, male and female alike, offered to accompany him back to wherever he was staying for the night, he always left alone.

Dusk had set in, causing the room to dim, but Danny was oblivious to it. For the last twenty minutes he had been  circling the bedroom, repeatedly reciting scenes out loud in order to capture the right timing and rhythm, when something in the mirror on the opposite wall caught his attention. Perhaps it had just been the reflection from something outside the window, a sliver of light bouncing off a building. He moved closer to the mirror, his pupils trying to focus. He’d noticed lately that his eyesight was weakening and he was going to need glasses. He hadn’t realized how dark the room had become. The closer he came to the mirror, the more puzzled he was by what he was seeing, to the point that he thought perhaps there was something on the glass itself.