Read From The Dead Online

Authors: John Herrick

Tags: #fiction, #romance, #hollywood, #suspense, #mystery, #home, #religious fiction, #inspirational, #california, #movies, #free, #acting, #dead, #ohio, #edgy, #christian fiction, #general fiction, #preacher, #bestselling, #commercial fiction, #prodigal son, #john herrick, #from the dead, #prodigal god

From The Dead (5 page)

As expected, Jesse’s teammates didn’t understand. The
jocks seldom interacted with the creative types, and Jesse’s
interest in stage productions suffered verbal jabs. Yet he
persevered in his craft, enthralled by the ability to climb into
another character, to become someone else for periods of time.
Although film versions existed for many of those plays, Jesse never
rented them until the school production completed its run. While
his cast mates watched the films to study their characters, Jesse
wanted to adopt his role as his own, to create something visible
from the unseen.

Unknown to those outside his family, Jesse possessed
an innate ability to empathize with the pain of others. As a boy,
Jesse would spot random individuals, such as a woman who sat alone
on a park bench or a man who had entered his final years of life,
and imagine how it must feel to wake up in the morning to their
isolation. This tenderness helped fuel his interpretation of
characters.

During his junior year, he played the role of Willy
Loman in
Death of a Salesman
. And with the depth of human
experience embodied by that character—the battle of despair and the
ache of failure—the deal was sealed. Jesse Barlow would pursue a
career in acting.

But this present wait, which couldn’t have lasted
beyond a minute, bordered on eternity for Jesse. He sneaked a
glance at Mark Shea and his crew, but they continued to whisper and
shuffle papers.

At last, Mark nodded to his assistant and leaned
toward Jesse. “I have to tell you, you look good to us. Your
interpretation of the character was dead-on accurate. You’re the
exact height and build we need. Now granted, this part is only a
few lines long, but for the film, we also need to take some shots
of this actor playing in a basketball game.”

He’s already talking about the film shoot,
Jesse thought. A positive sign—a strong one. Jesse’s heart rate
jumped a notch.

“Because the part is small, we won’t invest in
basketball training,” Mark continued. “Do you have experience with
the game? Nothing superior; just the basics. Enough to look like
you know what you’re doing?”

This started to sound even better.

“Sure. I played on a high-school team.”

Again Mark nodded, as if his question were a
formality and he had known its answer in advance.

Jesse grinned. His eyes grew feverish. Across his
brow, perspiration beaded, not in anxiety but in raw relief: a
golden triumph after years of defeat.

Could he have a lock on this role?

“Good deal,” Mark said. “We have a couple more
prospects to see, but we’ll notify your agent of our decision by
the end of the week.”

 

 

CHAPTER 7

 

Mark Shea’s decision arrived sooner. It came by five
forty-five that afternoon.

And it wasn’t good.

On his way home, Jesse’s car idled with its
stop-and-go companions, all engulfed in a soup of rush-hour traffic
on Interstate 405. How he cherished the carpool lane when he could
utilize it!

With the window rolled down, exhaust fumes funneled
into his vehicle, accompanied by their heavy odor. Jesse leaned
back in his seat and rubbed his eyes with one hand on the wheel. An
old Toad the Wet Sprocket CD played on the stereo. When he felt the
buzz of his cell phone in his pocket, he turned the music off and
answered.

“I heard back from Shea’s people.”

The connection was shoddy, which muted Maddy’s voice
on the other end. Nervous, Jesse tapped his left foot on the floor
with eager anticipation. He struggled to increase the phone’s
volume without missing a beat. He didn’t want to be presumptuous,
but if Maddy had received word so soon, he figured it must be a
solid sign.

“Mark promised a decision before the weekend,” Jesse
replied. “Was it good news?”

Maddy’s pause told Jesse all he needed to know.
Sometimes, in an instant, your gut plunges into your belly and, try
as you may to think your instinct faulty, you just can’t convince
yourself.

At this moment, Jesse wished his instinct
worthless.

If only.

“It’s a no-go,” Maddy said.

He shook himself from a trance and realized the car
in front of him had advanced. To catch up with the car was simple;
to search for a response to Maddy wasn’t. He moved his lips but
couldn’t locate his voice.

Jesse rested his head against his fingertips and
asked, “Did Mark say anything? Did I do something wrong? From the
way he talked, it sounded like I’d nailed the part.”
“Absolutely. Mark was impressed.”

“Then what happened?”

“He said your eyes are too wide.”

Jesse grunted, his forehead a crinkle of confusion.
“What does that mean?”

“Well, not owlish huge, just … wide.”

“Was it an aesthetic thing? Like that adage, ‘The
eyes are the window of the soul’?”

“No,” Maddy replied. “It was pure preference. They
didn’t feel you looked the part; there’s nothing more to read into
it.”

At least they were courteous about it,
Jesse
thought. He’d heard stories of industry people who made cutting
comments about an actor’s physical attributes. Now that he’d
received such a remark firsthand, it sounded too ridiculous to be
credible, yet it was true.

Jesse sighed. “So they found someone with better …
eyes.

“It’s a subjective business; you’ve learned that.
Don’t get discouraged over this. We’ll keep plugging away, and I’ll
let you know when another project pops up. In the meantime, you’re
still networking as well?”

“Of course.”
“Then we’ll continue to move forward together. Lots of
opportunities out there.”

And with that, their conversation ended. The traffic
accelerated from a sporadic crawl to perpetual motion as Jesse
stared ahead in his own oblivion. His heart sank. His stomach grew
acidic with nausea. That weighty sense of darkness, which had
lurked for months in the background of his mind, crept closer to
the forefront.

Stricken, Jesse felt reality finger its way into his
fibers. After eleven years, today he wondered if he had lost this
battle, and depression began to emerge as a formidable opponent.
Jesse wanted to shed a tear but felt too exhausted to do so.

Surrounded by vehicles, he wanted one thing: to
disappear.

 

 

CHAPTER 8

 

As Jesse had expected upon arrival, Los Angeles
shared little in common with his Midwestern hometown. But one
similarity between the two struck Jesse as eerie: L.A. traffic on
Sunday mornings seemed sparse. And at nine o’clock, this Sunday
morning in mid March followed suit.

He lived in the second-largest metropolitan area in
the country.
Could it be this simple for millions of people to
hide?
Once Friday hit, many industry executives, he knew,
escaped to homes elsewhere—some to outlying areas in California,
others as far as Nevada. Less wealthy individuals must hole up in
bed or in their own vicinities as he himself did, Jesse figured.
But come Monday, lives would converge in a mix of destiny and
pollution once again.

“What possessed you to go to the beach today?” Jada
asked while she chewed on a stick of gum.

“Seemed like a good time to think for a change. When
was the last time we went there to relax?”

Therein lay another anomaly: How many people, like
Jesse, dreamed of living minutes from the ocean? Jesse had lived
near one for years, yet he could count on one hand his number of
annual visits to that ocean and have three fingers to spare.

Jada popped in a CD and reclined on the passenger
side. Soon the car filled with the eclectic sounds of Joy Wilson,
an indie artist whose music Barry Richert had featured in his last
film. From the driver’s seat, Jesse studied the lanes around him on
Interstate 405, where he could picture tinny blue ghosts in a drag
race through eons among unsuspecting humans. And in this city,
Jesse doubted anyone would care.

He cocked his head and asked, “Have you ever thought
about how shallow this whole scene is?”

“What scene? The 405?”

“No, the industry. All the promises made, promises
broken. The notion that it’s acceptable to be full of shit. It’s
even anticipated ahead of time.”

Jada chuckled. “That’s the club we joined. It’s the
way the game is played. What’s wrong with that?”

“But isn’t there a point when someone reaches the end
of their rope? I mean, not everyone succeeds here—most people
don’t. Where do they go? Where do they end up?”

“I don’t know,” Jada sighed. “Jesse, I don’t give a
fuck.”

“They must go somewhere.”

“Maybe they sell chiseled art under those little pup
tents at Venice Beach.”

“I’m serious.”

As Jesse veered onto Interstate 10, Jada turned down
the stereo’s volume and pivoted toward him.

“You know what your problem is? You’re too damn
honest. Always have been.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“It’s not a bad quality. Look at your upbringing in
Ohio: You’re a white-bread boy from Bob Evansville. Hollywood
doesn’t come natural to you.” She shrugged her shoulders, no big
deal. “I grew up around bullshit. All those beauty pageants. And
Reno? Tsk.”

Jesse glanced in Jada’s direction but said
nothing.

“I’ll admit I got lucky working for Barry,” Jada
continued. “But hey, you’ve stayed afloat this long; just stay
afloat longer than anyone else.”

After he turned left off of Santa Monica Boulevard,
Jesse made his way down Ocean Avenue. As he drove parallel to the
beach, mere feet between the road and the sand, he noticed a
familiar sheet of horizon that peeked through trees and small
buildings. Something about the view spoke of freedom to Jesse, a
sense of pleasant foreboding: Here at eye level sat a massive
stretch of sky, of infinite blue azure, like a giant come to earth.
It fostered within Jesse a feeling of weightlessness, a horizontal
vertigo. The universe was within his grasp.

Jesse turned onto Colorado Avenue and into the public
parking lot.

* * *

With the temperature in the upper seventies, a tad
aggressive for this time of year, they found the beach
crowded—which, of course, Jada pointed out the moment her
cherry-red painted toenails touched the ivory sand. She preferred
to drive further north to a wealthier, less populated area, but
today Jesse needed to watch the passersby, to connect with their
carefree contentment.

Once they located an open patch of beach, Jesse and
Jada spread their blankets on the granular surface and lay down.
Side by side, they basked behind sunglasses in the shimmering sun.
Jada propped her head against her beach bag and immersed herself in
a script for the following day.

Jesse inhaled the fresh, salted air. As he peered up
at the Santa Monica Pier that stretched overhead, he watched
visitors stroll past souvenir shops and street performers, the
snack rotunda and carnival rides—and the ancient Ferris wheel
which, when afire with neon light in the evenings, appeared forever
cursed with a burned-out bulb tube.

Jesse savored the warmth as it penetrated his skin
and caked a layer of crusted sand upon his feet. A light breeze
danced about, which tickled Jesse’s hair and neck. He gazed at the
water as it hurled back and forth. From the corner of his eye, a
flash of motion lured his attention to a father and son, who
frolicked on the shore. The toddler, dressed in tiny,
fluorescent-green board shorts, giggled and hopped in circles along
the shoreline. His father grasped him by his pudgy underarms. He
lifted him a foot above the surface, then set him back on the wet
sand, which sent the child splashing into a fit of laughter.

Transfixed by the father-child relationship that
unfolded before him, a subtle smile quivered at the edge of Jesse’s
mouth.

Jesse nudged Jada. “Look at that,” he said, then
pointed to the pair at play.

Jada remained engrossed in her reading. She peered
over her sunglasses for a split second without so much as a tilt of
the head, then returned to her script. “What about them?”

“That kid looks just like his dad, don’t you
think?”

Indifferent, Jada peered up again, then back down.
“You’re right, same features head to toe—but the kid’ll outgrow
his
chubby ass.”

Intrigued, Jesse looked past the outward, physical
qualities to study their actions and reactions: gentle hands that
touched the boy’s head; the father’s arms around his son, which
communicated affection and protection at the same time. The scene
formed an indelible imprint on Jesse’s heart, a photograph within
his soul.

“I wonder how that dad felt the day his son was
born,” Jesse said. “Maybe he felt anxiety leading up to the day,
but then a sense of relief.” Jesse longed to know the answers; his
heart reached out for them. “The moment when that guy looked at his
kid and said, ‘This is my son. This kid is a part of me.’ It
must’ve blown him away.”

Jada ignored them. Typical Jada: What was there to
see? A man and his kid playing at the beach. Big deal. Jesse
sniffed at how two people could perceive the same thing in opposite
ways.

Jesse turned to her and asked, “Haven’t you changed
your mind about having kids someday?”

She sighed. “No, I haven’t. How many times do you
intend to bring this up?”

“We’ll be in our forties before we know it. Don’t you
think you’ll look back and wish we’d made a different
decision?”

“Look, you know I haven’t budged on this since the
day we met. Besides, what would I do with a kid? Even I have enough
sense to know I’d screw that deal up.”

Taken aback by the decisiveness in her reply, Jesse
returned his gaze to the little toddler, who now picked up random
shells and showed the prizes to his father.

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