Unsoul'd (26 page)

So I was surprised when my cell went off at noon -- PST -- and Caller ID said it was Sam.

"Randy, Randy, Randy," Sam said, then coughed, then said, "Hold on," then coughed again.

"Are you OK?"

"I'm fine. Goddamn flu season. I should move out to L.A., Randall. I bet you never get sick out there."

I was sitting on Kiki's balcony on perfectly clear day late fall day, wearing nothing heavier than a pullover. I had been awakened at ten by Kiki's mouth on my cock.

"I'm not gonna lie to you, Sam," I said, tilting my face to the sun. "It's pretty perfect."

"Damn. That's what I thought. Rub it in, Randy. Rub it in... Anyway, I'm calling because Fatima just got off the phone with someone claiming to represent Lacey Simonson--"

"Lacey?"

"Yes. And they wanted your phone number. I wasn't sure we should give it out, even to--"

"It's OK," I said immediately, not even sure why. "Go ahead."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

I couldn't imagine what Lacey would want from me or why she would want to contact me, but some part of me had lurched at the thought. I didn't trust much, but I trusted those internal lurches.

Maybe part of it was that Lacey had been the one, pure thing in my life since the devil had waved his hands and made my computer type itself all those months ago. She'd hugged me and I'd felt nothing -- no affection, no connection, but also no lust, no urge to defile her or hurt her the way I'd hurt Manda. Or use her the way I'd used Gym Girl. Being with Kiki was mind-blowing, but a vague cloud of guilt hung over me, as though I were somehow taking advantage of her, even though I was pretty sure it was the other way around. We hadn't professed love for each other yet and I was slowly beginning to realize we never would. Kiki, I came to understand, was incapable of it.

I had always thought I
was
, but now... For someone destined to be soulless, there seemed to be no point to love.

I couldn't love Lacey, but I also couldn't hurt her. And that's why when she called moments later, I agreed to meet with her almost before she could get the words out.

"I heard you've living in L.A. now," she started, "and I'm in town and I was wondering if we could--"

"Yes, of course. Where? When?"

"I don't know what your schedule is like--"

"I'll work around you," I said magnanimously and disingenuously, as I had nothing to reschedule.

A couple of hours later, I knocked at her hotel room door. Lacey answered in jeans and a Rutgers sweatshirt, her hair a little longer now, pulled back into a stubby ponytail. "I'm between meetings," she explained. "I know I look awful."

I almost blurted out, "I've seen you look worse," then -- horrified -- managed to turn it into a throat-clearing before words could form.

"You don't look awful," I told her, and it was true. She was fresh and makeup-less and glowing enough that I wondered if she was pregnant.

"They sent up wine," she said. "I'm having a glass. Want some?"

"No, thanks." So much for the pregnancy theory. Lacey was just naturally glowing. It was difficult to reconcile with that initial first image of her, bundled in the FDNY blanket on my TV.

She settled onto the sofa with her wine and tucked her feet under her thighs. I took the chair across from her.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, Lacey?"

"I was in town and I thought I should see you." She hesitated a moment. "Maybe it's stupid. I don't know. I bet... I'm sure that to you I'm just another reader--"

"Not true."

"--but I feel like maybe there's a connection between us. You really saved me, Randall. And it just seemed like..." She shrugged. "It just seemed like if I'm in town and you're in town, I should see you. That's all."

It was so simple and so right that I wanted to tell her to forget about me. To forget about my book. I was no good for her -- she had gotten what she needed from me and now she should discard me, the way I'd discarded Manda and Gym Girl. A gust of guilt blew through me. She felt like she was wasting my time. And I, I was responsible -- maybe not causally, but certainly karmically -- for what she had gone through.

"Why are you in town?"

"Talking about selling the rights to my story."

She couldn't have shocked me more if she'd said she was in town for a boob job and a gang-bang with the homeless.

"I thought... I mean, I had the impression that you weren't interested in--"

"I wasn't. And then the studio making your movie contacted me--"

"Shit. I'm sorry."

"No, no, it's OK. It really is. I thought about it and I've been thinking. A lot. About him."

I knew who she meant.
Him
carried freight. It was megatons of abuse.

"No one knows him like I do," she said quietly, looking down into her glass of nigh-untouched wine. "I know him better than his mother. His wife."

"He was married?" I was both surprised to hear it and amazed that I didn't already know it.

She nodded. "He told me things... He told me everything, you know? Because he didn't think I would ever be able to tell anyone else."

I swallowed. Hard. It was a strep throat swallow, a pre-tonsillectomy swallow. It took forever. I didn't want to know those things.

I had to know those things.

"He cried," she went on. "After. Most times. Begged me for forgiveness. And I mean, of course I gave it because what other choice did I have?"

"You had to tell--"

"The weird thing is that at some point, I really felt like I was forgiving him. Isn't that weird?"

"There's this thing called Stockholm Syndrome, where--"

"Oh, I know. I know all about it. My therapist goes on and on... But the thing is, I know all of this stuff about him. And I know that there are more like him out there. Which is sort of a stupid thing to say because
of course
there are more like him out there, but here's the thing. Here's the thing."

And she leaned forward, the wine totally forgotten now.

"There are more like him. And some of them can be stopped. Before they do what he did to me. Everyone is so focused on punishing them when they get caught. And helping people like me, if we survive. But no one is out there saying, 'How do we stop it in the first place?'"

She was so intense and so committed to the moment that I felt bad for not quite getting it. "What are you saying? What does that have to do with selling your story?"

"It's the money. I want to start a foundation. Or an organization. Something like that. I don't know which. It'll be focused on mental health, but it'll be proactive. It'll be about mass education, telling the world what signs to look for, where the red flags are. And maybe we can even get to guys like him. Get to them when they still have a little shred of self-control left, and they can get some help before they cave to the urges. And we make the world a little better, and this thing I went through ends up not being all bad."

All I could think of was the conversation I'd had with the devil the day Lacey had emerged. How he'd said that her captivity, her torture, were necessary and crucial steps in her personal evolution. I remembered being furious at that thought, hurling a glass against the wall.

But here, before me, was the devil's prophecy coming true.

"You think it's a stupid idea," she said, blushing, and I realized that my expression must have been one of slack-jawed astonishment.

"No, no!" I told her. "You just caught me off-guard. I think it's a great idea. It's just the last thing I ever expected to hear from you -- sympathy for--"

"Not sympathy," she corrected. "Just understanding."

"Right. Right. Of course."

Just then, her cellphone chirped. She checked the screen. "Oh. I have to get ready. They're sending a car for me." She stood up and put her glass on the coffee table, then reached out for a hug. I acquiesced.

"I'm so sorry," she said, walking me to the door. "I wanted to hear about how L.A. is treating you and I just jabbered on and on--"

"It's fine, Lacey. Really." I stepped into the hallway and she almost had the door closed when she pulled it open again and called me back.

"I wanted to mention," she said. "I don't know how you feel about this, but... You know, it's funny because people are still talking about
Flash/Back
, which is great, but... They keep saying it's life-affirming and uplifting. Isn't that strange?"

I wasn't sure where she was headed. I cocked my head and kept my expression neutral.

She got flustered. "I mean, look, I'm sorry if I'm wrong about this, but... It seems to me that the whole point of the book is that it's sort of a downer. And sometimes we need a downer. Sometimes life is like that. And you don't take it personally -- it just
is
. That's what I got out of it. That's what kept me focused during my time.." She shrugged. "I'm sorry. Is that wrong? Am I wrong about it?"

It gave me the strength to endure my time
, she'd said at Deux Livres.

"You're absolutely right," I told her, gravely, but inside I was screaming
Yes! She gets it!

"One more thing," she said, reaching into her pocket for a card. "This is my private number. My mom has it, and my bodyguard, and that's basically it. If you ever want to talk..."

I took the card. How could I not?

Wherein I Blow Off the Book

The book -- the new book -- still waited for me, nearly finished on my hard drive. But I felt an unease and a dissatisfaction every time I edged close to it, so I avoided opening the file, as though some sort of poison lurked in its digital structures, a poison that could flow from the pixels to the touchpad to me.

Instead, I found myself thinking about the screenplay. A lot. I had never had much of an interest in writing a movie, but Del's enthusiasm had wormed into my brain.
 

I wasn't entirely sold on Del's direction (the metafiction, some of the changes, even some of the things he kept) but who was I to say so? At almost every turn -- every time we got together to work -- he would check in with me, ask me what I thought of this notion or that twist. Some of them were quite good, and I was able stifle my envy only by reminding myself that his good work had been inspired by (and was, in fact, impossible without) my own.

Some of the ideas, though, just didn't work for me. They seemed either too Hollywood or too outré. Del, I realized, understood
Flash/Back
, the same way Lacey did, but was changing it anyway. It wasn't quite a Hollywood feel-good ending, but I could see it heading there.
Still, I enthusiastically endorsed his vision.

"I really appreciate your honesty, Randall," he told me one afternoon during a beer-break. Like Kiki, he had a balcony. Unlike hers, it overlooked what appeared to be a shopping center. Still, the breeze was cool and the sun invigorating and the beers refreshing as we sat out there. "A lot of authors don't understand that things have to change for the movie. Even so,
I think the studio is going to be antsy about some of this stuff, but with your support, they'll go for it."

Del and I had agreed that we would only work on the screenplay when we were actually together, whether physically or electronically collaborating. That way there would be no "issues" later over whom had created or contributed what. Taking notes to bring up at the next writing session was fine. That system made eminent sense to me.
 

But...

But as time went on and as I felt more and more comfortable with the screenplay format and the screenwriting process, I started to spin off my own ideas. They didn't fit into the framework Del had established, so I felt no guilt in fooling around with them in a separate file in the special screenwriting app I'd had to buy. It was just an exercise, really. Just loosening up the screenwriting muscles, keeping them limber for the big work I did with Del.

Kiki would occasionally look in on me as I mucked about with the faux screenplay. She'd spent her career reading them, of course, and she had all kinds of suggestions for improvement. She would lean over my shoulder as I typed, occasionally giggling in my ear or sucking in a breath that said, "Um, no."

"You're getting good at this," she said at one point.

"Really?"

"Yeah. I've read a fuckload of these things, Randall. I know a good one when I see it."

"Is that a metric fuckload or English standard?"

"Metric. You
wish
it was English standard."

The longer I lived in L.A., the more I became addicted to "buzz." Everywhere Kiki and I went, the buzz seemed more intense, more concrete. Fi had expertly managed to extricate Kiki from her MGM contract, and the movie version of
Flash/Back
was greenlit and fast-tracked, two Hollywood terms I had always found crass and overwrought, but which now -- I confess -- filled me with glee.

At a party at a producer's house one evening, someone said the words "Oscar-worthy" in my presence for the first time.

"We haven't even finished the script yet," I joked. But lightning filled my gut at the thought, I admit.