My Soul to Keep Read online

  They were easy with their power. Brent knew the attitude well enough. He had schmoozed enough of them on his climb up the film ladder. Now, he cut their lawns. Rich folks came in all shapes and sizes. These were all drawn from the top drawer—genuine, honest, direct. Brent sensed all this in the time it took them to fill their cups and find places around the table.

  Bobby kept doing his duck and weave in the suede swivel chair. “Okay, folks. The court’s open and the ball’s in play. Patrick, we did just like you said. The guy don’t know a thing. But he’s here and it’s your move.”

  The lawyer seated across from him was the most ponderous of the lot and the only one wearing a vest. “Are you staying sober, Mr. Stark?”

  The African-American woman said, “Nice opening, Pat.”

  Bobby said, “That’s what I sent you down to Austin to figure out.”

  “It’s a fair question,” Brent said. “Seeing as how he’s addressing a drunk and a felon. And the answer is I’ve been sober since the day I was arrested. Five years, six months, and three days.”

  “Good for you, honey.” The woman had a model’s magnetic beauty and the ability to mute her makeup so that it looked like natural perfection. “We’ve all been around folks who’ve fallen and gotten up again. Isn’t that right, Pat.”

  The man across from Brent flushed. “You heard Stark. It was a fair question.”

  “Give my lawyer room,” Bobby said. “And Pat, the man goes by Brent.”

  Brent nodded, both because he liked how Bobby Dupree maintained order with an easy tone and because he recognized the woman then. She was a former R&B diva, referred to in the trades as the woman most likely to inherit Aretha Franklin’s crown. Brent recalled several arrests for possession, followed by a stint in a rehab center, followed by a highly public conversion. She started doing Christian music after that and he’d found some of his own hard truths spun out in the woman’s lyrics. Brent was surprised he hadn’t recognized her at the outset. He said, “Your music got me through some real dark times, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, honey. That pretty much makes my day.”

  The lawyer cleared his throat. “What I want to know is can we trust this man to deliver?”

  Bobby nodded. “Leave it to an attorney to get down to the brass tacks. Jerry, you want to tell us what you think?”

  The man who had accompanied Brent back from Texas in silent hostility said, “Two days isn’t enough time to answer that question.”

  “When we’re after miracles, we know where to go,” Bobby replied. “Give us your take. That’s all we’re looking for here.”

  Jerry Orbain occupied the seat at the table’s corner by the window. He had pushed his chair back far enough to cross his arms, distancing himself from Brent as much as he could and still remain at the table. “I’ve got three observations. His acting, his business, and his friends. His acting was superb. He took a small role that could easily have been hammed into oblivion. He was by far the strongest actor and could have dominated the stage. Instead, he became a throne for this woman to rest on. He was not just a consummate actor, he was the glue that held the play together. And he did so by disappearing. Nobody noticed him.”

  “Except you,” Bobby said.

  “That’s why you sent me. To observe him. He was superb.”

  The atmosphere around the table eased a notch. The lawyer in the vest and the tight attitude said, “I have to confirm everything Jerry has said.”

  The singer said, “Don’t gush all over the guy.”

  “We’re talking about a huge investment,” the lawyer countered. “Two days is not enough time to make a definitive decision.”

  “The decision ain’t yours to make,” Bobby countered. “Go on, Jerry.”

  The man in the corner shifted in his chair. “Observation two, his business. Brent runs a lawn care company. He has a silent partner named Liz Courtney. Local mover and shaker. Solid rep. A real theater buff. The partnership is over two years old. Financially, it’s solid.”

  The lawyer broke in, “The company’s no headline grabber, but consistently in the black.”

  Jerry went on, “Ms. Courtney is also Brent’s friend. When we asked to meet with him, Liz basically put herself in the firing line.”

  “That says a lot about the guy,” Bobby said. “I can’t think of all that many partnerships I’ve funded where I’m still pals two years in.”

  “We’re taking an awful chance,” the lawyer said.

  Brent felt tiny shards coalescing into a sudden realization. These folks had a project. A film project. And they were considering Brent for the role of director. Or star. Brent swallowed. Or both.

  A second realization followed an instant later—Jerry Orbain’s sour attitude had nothing to do with Brent’s fractured past. Jerry wanted the director’s slot. Plain and simple.

  Despite that, Orbain had done both an honest and a thorough job checking him out. That fact shone a lot stronger than any reservations the board might be putting forward.

  Bobby Dupree studied his colleagues through a trio of swings to his chair. Then, “Give us the third observation, Jerry.”

  “We talked with those who’d speak. There was some criticism from the theater crowd, which basically has to be discounted.”

  “I don’t see why,” said the man across from Brent.

  The singer said, “People in the arts world stab fast and deep.”

  Bobby rolled his finger. “Let Jerry finish here.”

  “But nobody I spoke with could point to anything definite as a serious drawback. He doesn’t party. He doesn’t date. He doesn’t drink. He lives to act, and he gives every role his absolute best. The worst criticism I heard was that the man is a shadow.”

  “What do they mean by that?” Bobby asked.

  “My guess is, Brent’s holding back because he doesn’t want anybody to see him as usurping control.”

  Brent gave a fractional nod. The man’s appraisal was dead on target.

  Jerry went on, “I found how they acted a lot more important than what they told us.”

  “Which was?”

  Jerry nodded to the lawyer at the table’s opposite side. “You say it.”

  “They protected him,” the attorney replied. “They were hostile to us because they thought we were cops.”

  “Cops?”

  “They misunderstood our intro, is all,” Jerry said.

  “We saw the same thing at the Oscar party, and backstage at the theater. These people care for him. They’re family.”

  Bobby let that sit for a while. “Anybody got more questions?”

  The singer smiled. “A man with a felony rap finding family.

  That’s a hard act to follow.”

  “Patrick?” Bobby said.

  The lawyer tapped his pen on an empty pad. “Given everything we have managed to uncover, I cannot raise a single objection to our continuing.”

  Bobby straightened in his chair. “Okay. Before we get to round two, what say we all join hands and take this to the altar.”

  4

  Two days after the Nashville conference, Brent attended another AA meeting. Only this one took place in an open-sided chapel overlooking a Pacific Ocean dawn.

  Ever since the prayer time had ended in Bobby Dupree’s boardroom, the world had spun at the speed of fractured light. As Brent watched the sun rise over the pristine blue waters of Hilo Bay, he felt the Nashville group’s final prayers resonate in his chest.

  A fragile morning breeze rustled the leaves on wild palms. The chapel was simple in the extreme. The altar was carved from a tree trunk, the benches were rough-hewn slabs, the floor concrete, the roof thatched. Brent sat next to a sumo-sized Hawaiian named Eddie Pikku, his host at the meeting and his guide for what was to come next. The trip to Hawaii and his contact had been arranged by the folks in Nashville. Brent had asked, they had phoned. Simple as that.

  After the AA meeting ended, Eddie drove him back through Hilo, capital of the Big I
sland. Away from the glitzy seafront and the picturesque fishing port, Hilo was a time-warp of a town. Rusty clunkers shared potholed streets with barefoot children and mangy dogs. Eddie Pikku’s arm rested on the open window, so that his hand could rise and fall in lazy greeting to people who called out as they passed. Pikku himself said almost nothing. He was a gargantuan presence on the other side of the vintage Dodge, so large his belly pressed against the wheel.

  They pulled up in front of just another dilapidated shack. A wiry teen separated himself from a group and came over to stand by Brent’s window. Eddie spoke to Brent for the first time since leaving the AA meeting. “Give the kid ten bucks.”

  Brent did not bother to ask why. The kid took Brent’s money, leaned through the open window, and asked Eddie, “He’s gonna bring this back, right?”

  Eddie nodded. “The money is his, but the promise is mine.”

  The kid shrugged and walked around back and popped the trunk. Brent swiveled the mirror on his door. The kid stowed his dirt bike in the voluminous trunk, then banged it shut. “What’s going on?”

  “You’ll see soon enough.” Eddie gunned the motor and pulled away. “That kid has just done saved your life, man.”

  They left town by a road that swept through a valley of pineapple fields. The rise on the valley’s other side was gentle at first, traversing ritzy housing developments and pristine golf courses. When the slope grew steeper, they passed several coffee plantations. Brent asked, “How do you know the folks in Nashville?”

  “I don’t know nothing ’bout Nashville but country music, and I hate country music.” Eddie’s car chugged determinedly through increasingly tight turns. “I got a call from people I trust. They said to trust you.” He glanced over. “I can trust you, right?”

  Most of the time, they traveled through a verdant tunnel. Occasionally the cliffs ate at the road’s side, and Brent was exposed to a thousand-mile view. The earth dropped away in swooping green ribbons. Down below he saw miniature settlements with puny buildings, then blue. Far in the distance, the ocean was dotted with other cloud-rimmed islands. Then the green curtain swept closed again. Still they climbed.

  They crested what Brent assumed was just another rise, only this time the road jinked once and swooped down into another world. The jungle was replaced by a vast field of broken black rock. A sign on the main road directed visitors to turn right into a national park. Eddie hooked a left onto an unkempt lane. Within a hundred meters, they left the last green behind. The rock was sculpted into a billion molten shapes and glinted like frozen glass in the sunlight. Up ahead, a sullen black cone stained the sky with smoke. Brent asked, “What’s that?”

  “Kilauea. Over there is Mauna Loa. What, you never seen a volcano before?”

  “When was the last eruption?”

  “Relax, man. These smoking ladies have stayed calm since eighty-four. Lot of history to this place. The old people, they’ve had an altar up here for centuries. They still come up on that day when the seasons change—I forget the name.”

  “Equinox.”

  He shrugged his unconcern. “I left that stuff behind with the ganja weed, man. It’s God and me now. Got to know which rope to pull when you’re looking for air, am I right?” Eddie simply stopped in the middle of the rutted lane. He cut the motor, then gave Brent a careful look. “How you know the Lava Lady?”

  “Who?”

  “Candace Chen. That’s who you’re up here to see, right?”

  “She was a screenwriter in Hollywood.”

  “Sure. I heard that somewhere. You one of them actor fellows?”

  “I used to be.”

  “Okay. Here’s the word, man. You might have a pass from people I owe. But you hurt the Lava Lady, you don’t leave here alive.”

  Brent only needed one look into that moon-shaped face to respond, “I believe you.”

  “Candace Chen lives up here on the land of her grandfather, who was a chief. You better be listening, because this is important, what I’m telling you. Her home was where they had their temple, back before the tribe got saved. The locals might joke about her and call her Lava Lady, but you hurt her, they’ll do you, man. I mean it. They’ll toss you into the fiery pit and walk away.”

  “I’m not going to make trouble.”

  “Get your gear out of the back and head straight down that path. Follow it right to the end.” Eddie tapped his watch with a finger the size of a pick hammer. “You got three hours. Don’t make me come looking for you neither.”

  The so-called path was a level track that wound between three lava mounds, then disappeared around the bend. A rising wind moaned its way through the bizarre landscape. Brent’s way was clear enough, a gravelly indentation in a sea of sculpted glass. Occasionally smaller paths extended off. These alternate routes were marked by cairns of rocks and hand-painted signs that dripped the words Keep out. Brent kept the kid’s dirt bike in low gear.

  Three miles later, he came to a rise steep enough for him to have to dismount and push the bike to the top. The problem was not the grade so much as the slippery lava rock. Cresting the rise, he found himself on the lip of a rain-fed lake. The path looped around to the north and ended by a round-shouldered trailer that had been extended until only the camper’s front wall was visible. The additional rooms were a hodgepodge of junk and wood and rough-hewn stone. Between the camper and the lake was an outdoor kitchen-patio rimmed by a knee-high wall. The wall was decorated with plastic buckets filled with blooming plants. The blooms formed a raucous splash of color against the black rock wilderness.

  The camper’s front door squeaked loudly as the woman stepped outside and squinted into the sun. Brent called, “Ms. Chen?”

  “Do I know you?”

  “We’ve met.”

  She was much the same as the last time, and completely different. Which, Brent supposed, pretty much summed him up as well. He parked his bike by the side wall. “I’m Brent Stark.”

  “Been a long time.”

  “A lot of miles,” he agreed.

  Candace Chen wore cutoffs, sandals, and a T-shirt washed until the logo was illegible. She crossed her arms. “If you made the trip wanting to sell me on Hollywood, the lady’s not home.”

  “I live in Texas now.”

  Her eyes glinted as dark as the surrounding lava. “I heard you did time.”

  “Three years and a month.”

  “I suppose that’ll buy you five minutes.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  She turned to the butane stove. “You take honey with your tea?”

  “Whatever you’re having.”

  She served tea on the veranda. Brent drank from a scarred Bell jar. His rock bench was padded with a faded boat cushion. Candace turned a hand crank and unfurled a tattered canvas awning. Crystal chimes sounded so loud as to almost shatter the empty sky. The lake shimmered occasionally under the moaning wind. The water’s surface reflected two smoldering peaks. Brent struggled to find something both nice and honest about the place, and could only come up with, “You must have an amazing sky at night.”

  “The moon is bright enough to read by,” she agreed. “The whole world turns silver.”

  The speech seemed to be sucked from him. Every question that came to mind seemed wrong. But he could feel her eyes on him. He knew she was taking careful aim. Ready to shoot him down.

  “I found a lot of unexpected enemies inside the pen,” Brent said. The admission surprised him. He never talked about his time in prison. Not ever.

  But the empty vista was made for harsh confessions. He cradled his tea and said, “One was how time doesn’t move like it does on the outside. That was a big one. Then how the place acts as a nuclear power station for rage. And how danger is everywhere. I’d heard about it but never realized what it meant to live in fear all the time. No, not fear. A sense of …”

  When he struggled for the words, Candace said, “Dread and caution.”

  Brent did not want to risk looking
up. “That’s right. You’re the writer.”

  “Was,” she corrected. “Was a writer.”

  He let that pass. “Small things became as hard to handle as the big. Like the noise. And how you’re never alone. Being alone means you’re prey. So you stay constantly surrounded by people and noise, night and day, a crashing echoing mass of noise, like some beast that’s caged inside the steel and wire and concrete with you.”

  Brent stared out over the lake. “Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I’d find a place this lonely, or this quiet.”

  “Your thoughts can get awful noisy.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Brent replied. “Not for an instant.”

  He let himself really look at her then. Her naturally golden skin was tanned as dark as sourwood honey and her black hair was cut no-nonsense short. She was smaller than he remembered, tall yet as slender as a new moon, worn down to a tight lean nub. The bouncy excitement he recalled was gone. Candace Chen had aged far more than the years since their last meeting. Another thing they had in common.

  Seven years earlier, Candace Chen had arrived in Hollywood bearing a promising script and the most amazing pitch anyone had ever seen. A writer’s ability to verbally sell a story was often as important as the written script, because many producers simply did not read. With a background in off-Broadway theatrics, Candace Chen did not so much pitch her idea as perform it. Her third day in Los Angeles, a powerful female producer dragged Candace into the office of a studio chief by the name of Sam Menzes. Menzes watched in silence as Candace performed her pitch about a prima ballerina who loses a leg and must re-create her life. By day’s end, Candace Chen had landed a contract for her first script and been given a firm commitment on her second story. Her agent urged her to strike while the players were lined up. Candace agreed. The contract called for a hundred thousand dollar up-front payment against three quarters of a million dollars on final purchase—Hollywood-ese for first day of principal shooting.