Lovers and Strangers (2 page)

Los Angeles—1970

"Dammit, Eric!" Jack shouted, pitching his voice to be heard above the noise of the raucous party going on in the other room. He slammed the bedroom door shut, muting the sound of Steppenwolf being played at full throttle. "You're talking about selling out," he said, making an effort to remain calm and reasonable. "About giving in to the establishment. We said we'd never do that, remember?"

"Oh, man. Will you grow up? This isn't a student sit-in. And we aren't dealing with some flaky editor from one of those radical leftist rags you write for. This is the real world, man. This is a major studio with major money. Some of which they want to send our way."

"In exchange for prostituting our script!"

"In exchange for making it more commercial, dammit! What is it with you, Jack? This is the break we've been waiting for our whole lives. It's our chance for the big time. Money. Fame. Chicks." Eric threw his arm around his younger brother's shoulders. "Think of it, Jack," he said cajolingly. "Think of all the gorgeous chicks we'll have when we're famous Hollywood screenwriters. A different one for every day of the week, if we want 'em. And a house. We could get ourselves a real bitchin' place in one of the canyons, just the two of us, like we always talked about. And cars. Man, you can finally trash that rusted-out Bug and get yourself a bitchin' black Vette like you've always wanted." He paused to take a toke of the joint he held between the thumb and index finger of his left hand, offering it to Jack after he'd filled his own lungs with the sweet-smelling smoke.

Jack waved it away, moving out from under his brother's arm to avoid inhaling any of the drug. He wanted a clear head.

"Don't blame you," Eric said as he released the smoke. "This is some sorry shit." He grinned. "But who the hell cares, right? 'Cause we'll be able to afford the primo stuff when we're rich. Man, it'll be so good, Jack. You and me, together, just like we've planned ever since we were little kids hidin' out from Uncle Mick in the basement. And it's all within reach. All we gotta do is just reach out—" he thrust his right hand straight out in front of him, fingers spread wide "—and take it," he said, closing his fist tight.

"No, that's not all we've got to do to get it," Jack said. "I wish it was, but it isn't. And I won't do what we'd have to do." He shook his head. "I can't."

"Dammit, Jack!" Eric exploded. The cajoling older brother of a moment ago was gone, replaced by an angry young man who could see his dream slipping away from him. "Stop being so damned self-righteous! It's just a bunch of words on paper. They're not carved in stone."

"No, they're not," Jack agreed. "Don't you think I know they're not? And I'd agree to changing them if it made the story better. But the changes those hacks at the studio want will take our script and turn it into another slick, superficial movie without meaning or—"

"Slick, superficial and
successful,"
Eric interrupted.

"Do you really want success that way, Eric?"

"Damn right, I want it that way. I want it any way I can get it. If you had any brains, you would, too."

"No," Jack said stubbornly.

"Fine!" Eric took a last drag on his joint and stabbed it out in a nearby ashtray. "If that's the way you want it, then fine. I'll do it without you."

"You can't."

"Don't tell me I can't, little brother," Eric sneered. He crossed the distance between them as he spoke, trying to crowd Jack into a corner. They both stood an even six feet tall but Eric, at twenty-four, was broader and heavier than his still gangly eighteen-year-old brother.

"Back off, Eric," Jack warned.

"That script is as much mine as it is yours, and don't you forget it." Eric jabbed him in the shoulder to emphasize the point. "And I can do anything I damn well please with it."

"No, you can't," Jack said, trying desperately to hold on to his temper. "Now, back off, Eric. I mean it."

Eric ignored the warning. "What makes you think I can't?" he taunted. "I'm the one who's in tight with the producers. Hell, they don't even know who you are." He jabbed Jack in the shoulder again. "So what makes you think I can't make any changes I want to that script? Huh?" Eric jabbed him again. "Come on, tell me why you think I can't make the changes." Another jab. "Tell me why I can't, Jack."

Jack grabbed his brother's wrist. "Because you haven't got the talent to do it by yourself," he said furiously, staring into his brother's eyes. "And we both know it."

Chapter 1

"Since when did you start hiring high school cheerleaders to push drinks?"

Tim O'Casey looked up from the glass he was polishing. "Pardon?" he said to the lone man sitting at the bar.

Jack Shannon nodded toward the scene reflected in the long polished mirror behind the bartender's head. "She looks about eighteen." He blew a plume of smoke into the air and peered through it. "Nineteen, if you squint."

Tim didn't have to look to know who the other man was talking about. He'd only hired one waitress lately who looked as if she'd taken a detour on the way home from pom-pom practice. "Twenty-four, according to her job application." Tim placed the polished shot glass on the edge of the bar, lining it up with a half-dozen others, and reached for another one.

Jack stubbed out the second of the three cigarettes a day he was allowing himself this week. "Did you ask to see her driver's license?" he asked, his eyes still on the mirror, watching the scene being played out behind him. The waitress might not be quite so young in years as she appeared, he thought, but she was definitely young in experience. "Good old Freddie is putting the moves on her," he said, as Flynn's official Lothario put his hand on the young woman's arm and gave it a friendly squeeze. "She doesn't like it but she doesn't have the vaguest idea of how to stop it."

"I know," Tim said, glancing past Jack's shoulder to check on the situation. "But I'm giving her a chance to learn how to handle it on her own." A corner of his mouth twisted up in a pseudo-comical grimace. "My wife says I need to learn to control my Galahad complex."

Jack lifted an eyebrow. "Galahad complex?"

"Apparently women don't need men to come rushing to their rescue anymore." There was a trace of wounded male pride under the casualness in his voice. "They can take care of themselves just fine, if we give them half a chance. Or so I'm told."

Jack snorted lightly, a sound both noncommittal and commiserating, and lifted his beer to his lips. According to the scuttlebutt floating around the neighborhood, Tim was having trouble relating to today's modern career women but, hell, what man wasn't? It wasn't something Jack wanted to discuss, especially when the woman in question was the man's wife. He put his half-f pilsner glass down on the bar, pushing it slightly away, and automatically reached for his cigarettes. "How's the script coming?"

Tim shrugged, accepting the change in topics like the good bartender he was. "The studio wants another rewrite. They said if I can beef up the female lead, Meg Ryan's people might be interested."

"Sounds promising," Jack said, absently fingering the pack of cigarettes, wondering if he should save the last one for later when he might really need it, or give in and smoke it now.

Tim shrugged again and added another shot glass to the row on the bar. "Three months ago they thought the female character was too strong, so I had to trim her dialogue. Make her less—and I quote—strident."

Jack nodded. "Development hell," he said, with the air of one who knew. It had been a long time, but he remembered just what it felt like to have the words you'd agonized over ripped to shreds and rearranged by some hotshot would-be producer whose only interest was the bottom line. He sighed, wondering if he had it in him to go through it again, and shook out the third cigarette. If he needed one later, he'd just have to tough it out. Or borrow from tomorrow's allotment. He bent his head to the flame Tim offered, his gaze straying back to the mirror as he sucked in a deep, satisfying lungful of smoke. His eyes narrowed.

"How long are you going to let that go on?" he asked, more irritated by the fact that he was irritated than by what was actually happening. It wasn't any of his business if some inexperienced little cocktail waitress couldn't handle a basic barroom come-on.

"I'm keeping an eye on it." Tim shook out the match and dropped it into an ashtray. "Freddie hasn't crossed the line yet. He rarely does," he said, nodding a greeting at the trio of businessmen who were settling onto the stools at the other end of the bar. "If you're worried about it, though," he added, lingering a moment more before going to take their drink orders, "feel free to step in and handle it for her. Who knows?" He lifted one shoulder in a shrug that said he didn't really believe what he was about to say. "She might even thank you for the help."

"Yeah, right," Jack snorted as the bartender moved away. No way was he going to get involved. No, sir. It wasn't any of his business. If she didn't know how to cope with the Freddie Bowens of the world, then she shouldn't be working in a place like Flynn's. She probably wouldn't thank him for his concern, anyway, like Tim had said, women didn't need men to go rushing to their rescue anymore. Or so they thought. And who was he to argue with a woman's sense of self?

But he continued watching them in the mirror, anyway, his eyes hooded, his expression waiting and wary. He'd seen more than one seemingly harmless situation turn ugly in the blink of an eye. A man thwarted could become dangerous in a heartbeat; a woman coerced could turn as savage as a cornered cat. He'd seen it happen a hundred times, in a hundred different places. Not, he mused while staring at them through the drifting smoke of his cigarette, that either one of the participants in the little drama being enacted behind him seemed likely to act out their aggressions.

Freddie Bowen didn't have the juice for it. He was in his mid-forties, Jack guessed, and trying desperately to look younger. He was tall and slim, with a thirty-dollar salon haircut, a carefully trimmed mustache and an eye for accessorizing that would put most women to shame. His teal blue tie picked up one of the colors in his glen plaid sport coat, complemented the slightly lighter color of his shirt and echoed the herringbone pattern in his socks. Not the kind of guy, Jack thought, who would want to risk having his lapels rumpled by an angry woman.

The girl—
woman,
Jack corrected himself with a grimace as he blew another plume of smoke into the air. The
woman
wasn't nearly so young as he had first supposed. Not in years, anyway. But there was an air of wholesomeness about her, some elusive something that hinted at a decidedly old-fashioned kind of innocence. He studied her with his reporter's eye, trying to decide exactly what it was that gave her that look of fresh-scrubbed naiveté.

Her hair was just past shoulder length, the slight wave and light reddish brown color both completely natural, he was sure. It was simply styled, with two tortoiseshell combs holding it back from the pale oval of her face. As far as he could tell, the only makeup she wore was a soft rose-colored lipstick and, maybe— judging by the way her eyes dominated her face—a touch of mascara on her lashes. She was dressed in the same uniform all the other waitresses at Flynn's wore. She filled it out nicely, too, he noted, her softly rounded body neither model skinny nor sexpot voluptuous. But, somehow, the trim black skirt, fitted black satin vest, pleated tuxedo shirt and snappy red bow tie that made the other waitresses look sexy or sophisticated just made her look all the more country girl wholesome in contrast.

Jack grinned slightly, wondering where in the hell a juiceless dandy like Freddie Bowen got the nerve to lay so much as a finger on so much unsullied purity.

And then his grin faded.

"Damn," he swore softly, watching as Freddie moved his hand from the waitress's arm to the curve of her waist. "Knock that drink over on him, Angel," Jack said under his breath. "A lap full of wine will cool him right off."

But the young woman just smiled weakly, shaking her head in reply to whatever Freddie had said to her, and tried to edge away from the unwanted touch. Freddie's hand slipped from her waist to the curve of her hip, holding her where she was.

"You're stepping over that line, buddy," Jack muttered, waiting for the objection he was sure she would make now.