Authors: Jack Baran
The telephone wakes Pete at noon, he’s overslept. He never oversleeps.
“Hey, Dad, I heard you were working again.”
“Annabeth?” When was the last time he talked to his daughter?
“You don’t recognize my voice?”
“Who told you I had a job?”
“Mom. Your agent told her.”
“She’s still friends with David?”
“They… thought…
“Why should they think anything?”
“No reason. Remember saying if you ever did another Hollywood job you’d buy me a round trip ticket to Paris plus pay some of my expenses?”
“I must have been high.”
“Probably, but I have video.”
“Bethy, is your mother dating David?”
“What does their relationship have to do with my going to Paris?”
“Relationship?”
“Dad.”
“Have you visited me once since I moved to Woodstock?”
“Are you reneging, going back on your word?”
“I know I’m out of the loop but aren’t you in your junior year at Santa Cruz?”
“I’m taking the semester off to get my head together.”
“What drugs are you taking?”
She hangs up.
Was that a cry for help or was she working him? And what about Barbara and David, are they an item? Pete practices deep breathing as he measures the beans and grinds the coffee.
• • •
When Bethy was nine she went through a bad patch academically. Pete thought she was too social; Barbara informed him their daughter was dyslexic, explaining why she read below her grade level. Mom did research, spoke to colleagues, found therapies and Annabeth overcame her disability. This established the pattern of supermom to the rescue, while average dad was absent as usual. That’s what Barbara called him, she could have said he was working, somebody had to.
In the progressive, private schools Annabeth attended she excelled at what interested her, like English (she was now an avid reader) and sports, especially tennis. As for the rest, she made passing grades. Always popular, she had an ebullient personality most of the time and was sulky when she didn’t get her way; both parents indulged her. For Barbara that meant supporting her daughter’s every whim from sailing to horses, all expensive. Pete was no better, letting Annabeth get away with too much, rationalizing her behavior because she was special.
Unknown to both of them, she and her friends began smoking pot when they were thirteen, stealing Pete’s gourmet bud. How was it possible he didn’t notice? Absent as charged.
He and Barbara were in denial about their daughter having accidents with various family cars, believing Annabeth’s explanations for missing class or not being where she was supposed to be. They were also preoccupied with the disintegration of their marriage then in the ugly stage. When they finally confronted Annabeth, she called them hypocrites.
Pete moved out the summer before her senior year, the same summer she was busted for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana and a wide assortment of pharmaceuticals.
For him, drugs were a mind-expanding doorway into the subconscious, a kick-start to creativity. Pete prided himself on being a productive maraholic, but who was he fooling, it started as recreation.
Barbara convinced Annabeth to go to rehab and found a wilderness program on the Upper Peninsular in Michigan. She went and pulled it together, returning to school in the fall, even making the tennis team.
As mother and daughter’s bond strengthened, Pete felt more and more guilty about the kind of father he was. When the divorce became final, he was officially disenfranchised. They were happy to see him go.
Pete sips his morning coffee at noon, opens the NY Times Business Section to check the slide of his safe investments, reduced forty percent in value last year, producing less and less income. Better not blow the Hollywood job when his life is approaching deficit.
Pete goes to the motel office and sits down with Jamie his manager to discuss the current financial state of the Streamside. She was Pete’s first hire, charming him with the story of how she was conceived at the Woodstock Festival. Her mom and dad, a sandal-maker and a weaver, lived out the hippie myth. Their summer of love ended in a car crash on Route 28. Baby Jamie survived and was adopted by very strict Catholics from Saugerties. She became emancipated when she was sixteen, a single mother by the age of twenty. Her son, Jackson, the guitar wizard from the pizza parlor, never met his father, a horn player from Memphis.
Jamie, forty-one, is a ball of energy with a radiant smile. “I’m a people person,” she told Pete when he hired her. She started out cleaning rooms and within three months was managing the place. Pete concentrated on the renovation; she was the front person and the reason there were so many repeats. She’s excited when Pete tells her about the writing job. “You were letting your talent go to waste, boss.”
“Jamie, I’m proud of what we’ve done here. Writing is a con.”
“Don’t be negative, Mr. Stevens.”
It’s drizzling when he returns to the house and redials Annabeth. “Is your mother actually dating David or am I inventing?”
“You always said you wanted mom to be happy.”
“Not with my agent.”
“I’m glad you’re working again.”
Everyone is happy Pete is writing but only he knows it will probably end badly. “What’s owning and operating a 23 unit motel supposed to be?”
“Honestly Dad, the motel business is so not you.”
“So how long has it been going on between David and your mother?”
“Ask mom. Bye dad.” She disconnects.
“Ready to work?” It’s Cleo, sneaking up on him. She’s wearing the Red Sox cap again.
“I need couple of hours for personal hygiene, yoga, chores, that kind of thing. Are you from Boston?”
“I know one of the players, he gave me the hat.” She jogs out of the parking lot, across Sully’s Bridge, turns left and disappears down the road on the other side of Mill Stream.
Kevin Youklis’ uncle owns a bar in Tribeca. Cleo must have fucked Youk, the Red Sox third baseman. Pete drives to the local video store and finds two more titles starring Desirée, bumps into Brother Ray in the parking lot, schlepping grocery bags from the health food store. The Buddhist monk is eighty, looks sixty, retains a child’s sense of wonder and does Tai Chi every morning. They say he walked out of China during the Cultural Revolution, took five years, but he rarely talks about it.
“Brother Ray, need a ride?”
“If you like.”
“I like.”
Pete takes a right at the piazza, passing the Colony, a Spanish style three story stucco building built in the Twenties as a hotel catering to rich swells up from the city for a weekend of debauchery. Padlocked for years, it’s a struggling music venue now.
He stops at the blind intersection up the road. “They say Dylan had his motorcycle accident right here. Some people think he faked it to get out of the limelight.”
“Did he succeed?”
“It only added to his mystique. Do you think a person my age can change, Brother Ray?”
“What do you seek?”
“To live in harmony, not want things.”
Brother Ray smiles. “That’s progress.”
“But then along comes something I want.”
“Change not easy.”
The pickup bounces its way up a narrow gravel road and stops at the foot of a steep path leading to a modest cabin with a big garden.
“A lot of work living here by yourself, I admire your vitality.”
“Ready to move on. I have occupied this body long enough.”
“Time for a new one.”
The old monk laughs merrily. “You a wicked boy.”
Back at the Streamside, Jamie is on the phone with her son. Jackson has been busted for dealing grass. Her baby is being held at the Ulster County Jail.
“How old is the kid?”
“The kid is 19, an adult, not a juvenile offender. I need to get him out of that terrible place.”
“How much for bail?”
“Two thousand.”
“I’ll do it.”
From its inception, the construction of the Ulster County Jail had been enmeshed in allegations of payoffs and kickbacks; inside deals typical of the way business is done upstate. The scandals caused countless delays. Somehow charges were never filed, nor fines levied.
When the jail finally opened, it was five million dollars over budget, but oh what a magnificent prison, complete with a razor-wire perimeter fence. Here, in beautiful Ulster County amid bucolic surroundings is a hi-tech lockup for Mid-Hudson Valley felons and imported high value criminals.
Pete waits in the cold lobby wondering if he’s doing the right thing posting bail for the kid. People were always getting Jackson out of trouble. The sweet, vulnerable boy did occasional jobs around the motel, a competent worker if you could keep him focused. Painting a unit one day Jackson confided that Jaime, his mother, had a girlfriend.
“Ever meet your father?”
“He was dead by the time I found out who he was.”
The cell phone rings, its Bobby, hysterical. Pete steps outside.
“They fired me, fucking Bergman himself, and it’s your fault!”
“What did I do?”
“After reading the rewrite, he decided I was too old to play the part, said you made the chief younger. I can’t believe what you did. It was me got you the assignment.” He hangs up.
Before Pete can process Bobby’s tirade, Jackson is released.
“Mr. Stevens, thanks man, I would have flipped someone didn’t bust me out of here.”
“Looks pretty nice to me.”
“It’s a prison.”
Pete loses it. “You were arrested.”
“When you first came to Woodstock and wanted to score who did you ask? A sixteen year old kid.”
“I should have known it was my fault.”
“I didn’t mean to guilt trip you, I’m sorry.”
“Your mother is very upset.”
“I scored for her too.”
Pete passes the flashing red lights of a police car ticketing a weekender. “They get you for weight?”
“Couple of bags.”
“How many?”
“Ten Z’s.”
Pete is shocked. “That’s more than half a pound. This is New York State, the drug laws are tough. They can easily put you away for a long time.”
“For a first offense?”
“Fifteen years minimum.” He pulls into the Stewarts. “I need an ice cream,” a quick fix for any problem. Pete orders Rocky Road in a waffle cone; the kid has vanilla fudge.
“Are you a dealer or a musician? Tell me.”
Jackson smiles for the first time. “Got a gig with Harvey Mason at the Colony tomorrow night.”
“Not if you’re in a jail cell.”
They drive in silence listening to a classic second line shuffle on the radio. The boy closes his eyes, digging the music.
“Don’t be stupid and blow your possibilities. You’re talented but it is so easy to fuck up.”
“No more dealing, I promise.”
Pete drops the boy outside the small house where he lives with his mother.
Jamie is waiting, she’s been crying. “I’ll make this up to you, Mr. Stevens.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Pete.”
Jackson hugs his mother.
P
ete sneaks into the house and calls Marcus Bergman from his office. “Marcus, Pete Stevens. Bobby said you fired him.”
“After reading the elevator scene, he makes no sense, you wrote the chief younger. I want David Duchovny.”
“I wrote it for Bobby.”
“You wrote it for me. I paid you. By the way, your Condoleezza take on the mayor is fantastic, the scene really pushes the envelope, it’s erotic and funny and the surprise when we hear her inner voice at the end is a brilliant touch. I can’t wait to show the network the changes. Good work, buddy, you nailed it.” He hangs up.
Pete considers the moral dilemma of being the brilliant buddy of a man who fired his best friend.
There’s a loud knock on the door. “I know you’re in there.”
It’s her. “Leave me alone.”
Cleo enters barefoot. “Are you avoiding me?”
“I have major problems I’m trying to deal with.”
“In the dark?” She turns on the light, stares at him myopically.
Why does she have to wear that that fucking boatneck? And her gap tooth smile is getting to him. “I’m starving,”
She follows Pete downstairs. “Are we ever going to work?”
“Tomorrow.” Pete eats a banana in three quick bites, grabs a handful of almonds from a jar and cracks open a Corona.
“You are avoiding me, admit it.”
“Don’t force the creative process.”
“Pete, it’s obvious we’ll never get anywhere on this project unless we get past this sexual barrier you’ve created.”
“Me create what? You said let’s keep it creative; I said no problem, I’m celibate.”
“I say let’s fuck and move on.” She pulls off her top. Her breasts are not huge but they have a lot of personality especially the nipples. “Is Petey wondering if I had a boob job?” She guides his hands to them. “A man with your experience should know.”
Pete’s heart beats faster. He cups them lovingly. “I don’t like the word boob, it means stupid. I prefer melons, but any ripe fruit will do. In my humble opinion, yours are peaches.”
“Will you supply the cream?”
“Cleo, for three years I’ve traded desire for consciousness.”
“So why are you squeezing my nipples?”
“My fingers operate of their own volition.”
“Is that why you have a hard on?”
“Possibly.”
Her voice subtly changes, becomes huskier like in
Lost In The Cosmos
. “No desire to fuck me?”
“Sex confuses, I seek clarity.”
“I seek creativity.” Cleo unbuttons Pete’s shirt.
He looks at her wistfully. “Once upon a time, I played baseball, basketball. I was an athlete.”
“Not to worry, help me off with my panties.” She sits down on the dining room table, lifts her legs for Pete to slide them over her hips. Without breaking eye contact, she shows off an irresistible full bush, surprising in an age of wax.
“I thought adult films require shaved pubes?”
“I grew mine back after my last movie. Carlos loved it, called it his private forest, I call it Precious.”
“Precious,” Pete whispers, “you’re beautiful.” How can a celibate geezer resist when his cock is straight as a rod? He looks at Cleo wistfully. “I’m sixty three years old and not in your league, probably never was.”