My Soul to Keep Read online

  “Their project is about Thomas Paine, Mr. Menzes, not Daniel Boone. Same intended audience. And no, they are still in turnaround. This competing project is from a new studio. An indie.”

  “You know anything about this?” Sam asked Brad.

  “No, sir. Which makes me wonder how real this could be.”

  “It’s real, all right.” Shari kept her gaze on the chairman. Brad no longer existed. “And they’ve bought the Chen script.”

  The renowned Menzes calm finally cracked. “I own that story.”

  “Actually, sir, you gave up all rights in exchange for Candace Chen returning every cent she earned from the first script.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Yes, sir. I withdrew the documents from Contracts yesterday. I have a copy with me, if you want to see it.”

  “Show it to Legal, see if they can find a way to battle it.” Menzes drummed his fingers on the desk. “All right. Give me what you have.”

  “It’s a Nashville-based group, so new they haven’t even named the production company. They acquired Hope-TV, basically to get their hands on the cable network stations.”

  Brad sneered, “So we’re blowing smoke over a made-for-TV puff?”

  Shari did not bother to glance at the aide. “They are doing a major feature.”

  “Who’s directing?”

  “They have approached Brent Stark.”

  Brad huffed. “He’s a drunk! A one-hit wonder of a scriptwriter has teamed up with a has-been who’s made headlines with every tabloid on earth. PR will eat them alive.”

  Menzes ignored the young man seated by the wall. “You get this from Bud?”

  “No, sir. I’ve developed these leads on my own.”

  “Have you informed him?”

  “Last night.” Which in and of itself had been Hollywood perfect. Shari had discovered in Bud Levinson’s night nurse a woman who shared her own frustrated loathing for the man. The nurse could not do what she wanted, which was to smother the Hollywood exec with his pillow. But she could tell Shari when Bud would be completely zonko from his nightly cocktail. Shari recorded a conversation in which she relayed everything she had uncovered, and finished with the high note that she had scheduled a meeting with Menzes. Her boss, who was so paranoid about somebody stealing his slice of power that he had long ago ordered her never to set foot in the executive elevator without his express permission, had last night mumbled his agreement that this information simply could not wait and that she should hire herself some outside detectives to check things out on the ground. “He said to tell you hi.”

  “Did he.” Menzes drummed a second longer. “So walk me through it.”

  She knew it was a test, that he half disbelieved it, a production assistant who had never opened her mouth in a director’s meeting before had come up with a scoop like this all on her own. “A source revealed that you had finally green-lighted the Daniel Boone project and started production.”

  “A source.”

  “Yes, sir.” She pressed her jaw out more firmly. If he asked, she would indignantly decline to answer that her source was another guppy working on the studio’s back lot.

  But Menzes didn’t ask. “Go on.”

  “I heard through another source that Hope-TV’s new owners acquired the old Angelini studio.”

  Menzes rocked back in his seat. “You’re sure about that, are you?”

  “I have written proof.” Dino Angelini had prospered on the back of tough-guy films and handed a successful company over to his daughter, who had proceeded to make a series of true cinematic bombs. Variety had described her last three-hour epic as “a waste of perfectly good celluloid.” Shari withdrew the photocopied pages from her slim portfolio. “The deed of sale.”

  “I never thought Dino would let that go.”

  “He had no choice, sir. The company was hemorrhaging money at the rate of a million dollars a week.”

  “Where are they located, Virginia?”

  “Wilmington, North Carolina.”

  “So they have a studio and they have a cable outlet and they have a project.”

  “But no name,” Brad sneered.

  Menzes glanced at the young man, as though trying to remember why he was in the room. He turned back to Shari and said, “This is your baby. Rock it.”

  She could have hit an operatic high note. “You got it, sir.”

  “Updates, Ms. Khan. I want to know everything.”

  “Soon as it’s mine, it’s yours.”

  “Find us a weakness. Something we can exploit.”

  “I won’t let you down, Mr. Menzes.” She stood, zipped her portfolio shut, and waited for Sam Menzes to turn away before smirking her silent farewell. Bye-bye, Brad.

  6

  The next afternoon, Candace Chen drove Brent back to Hilo in her dust-caked Jeep. When they arrived at the airport, she halted far down the sidewalk from the departures entrance. Overhead, clouds grazed on the blue sky like airborne sheep. The airport’s rhythm was island slow. Candace pulled the keys from the ignition and played with them like worry beads. “I’m going to stay with my folks here in town for a day or a week, until I have a genuine sense of what needs doing here.”

  “I couldn’t ask for more.”

  “You meant what you said? If I don’t come, you won’t direct?”

  “Precisely.”

  “That’s a heavy burden to lay on a gal.”

  In the stark Hawaiian daylight, Candace’s face was stronger than he remembered, and her eyes held a cautious note. Her bubbly enthusiasm was gone, but in its place was a calm certainty. Brent felt no hesitation in saying, “I’m not laying this at your feet, Candace.”

  “Sounds that way to me.”

  “I’ve set it at the altar. I’ve put this in God’s hands. Maybe you should spend some time praying about this.”

  Her hands stilled. “Hearing that from a Hollywood star makes me quiver all over.”

  “I told you. This isn’t Hollywood. And I’m not a star.”

  She started to respond to that but checked herself. Whatever was there in her shining dark gaze, her thoughts remained unspoken.

  Brent asked, “You want to have a word of prayer together before I leave?”

  This time the shivers were visible. “Go for it.”

  When they were done, Brent shook her hand, thanked her for the dinner and the bunk and the stars, and headed inside. Throughout the check-in procedure, as he passed through security and waited for his flight to be called, he debated whether he had been as fully honest as he should. He tried to convince himself that there had been no lie in omission.

  But the whole truth was, Brent had laid two fleece upon the threshing floor. And the greatest impossibility he had set before God was not Candace Chen at all. Instead, it waited for him in Beverly Hills.

  The residential section of Beverly Hills was an exclusive island of Imperial palms and emerald lawns. The streets seemed paved in velvet rather than asphalt. Most houses had neither numbers nor names. Privacy was secured behind drapes drawn over bulletproof front windows and steel doors masked by oak veneer. Tiny security shields were planted in every front lawn. Brent turned his rental off Sunset, took the first right, the next left, and parked. He wanted to pray. But right then his heart hammered so loud all he could really do was stare at his hands. Finally he looked at the sun-splashed windshield and said, “You are in this with me, right?”

  A bird warbled. A car passed. The clock in the dash flicked through another meaningless number.

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured.” Brent rose from the car, hit the lock, and started up the path. Everywhere he looked, the scene was mined with the shrapnel of memories. He stopped at the front step and recalled another bright California morning. One when he had woken up to discover he had spent the night right where he now stood. On the front lawn beside the flower bed. He still had no idea how he’d gotten home.

  Home.

  The house was built in the old S
panish style, a one-story ranch surrounding an interior courtyard. The patio area contained an indoor-outdoor living area paved in rough-cut marble, an outside kitchen, a second dining area, a small pool, and a huge jacaranda tree ringed by a cedar bench. The second year Brent had owned the house, the tree had contracted some awful wasting disease. He had spent almost ten thousand dollars in tree surgeons and vitamin injections. He pressed the doorbell and wondered if the tree still lived.

  His former maid answered the door. “Hello, Manuela.”

  “She no see you, Mr. Brent.”

  He nodded. “How have you been?”

  “She say to tell you—”

  A voice from the shadows said, “Oh, go ahead and let him in, Manuela.”

  It was hard to tell who was more surprised, the Guatemalan maid or Brent. Manuela stepped back from the doorway.

  He entered his former home and immediately saw her, seated on a white leather sofa in the sunken living area, an open magazine in her hands. “Hello, Celia.”

  She looked back down at the magazine and casually flipped a page. “Manuela, keep the phone handy. If he does anything suspicious, call the cops.”

  “I’m not here to cause trouble,” Brent said.

  “You heard what I said, Manuela.”

  “Yes, Ms. Breach.”

  She turned toward him coolly. “Will you say your piece and never bother me again?”

  “Yes. If that’s what you want. Send me away this time, and I will never come back. Ever.”

  Either his words or the way he spoke them caused the woman to say, “You might as well come sit down.”

  “Thank you.”

  Celia Breach had a star’s ability to find the best possible light. She sat with the doors to the courtyard behind her. The sunlight backlit her, hiding the scars that ran from her temple to her hairline. The scars he had caused. In the accident he could barely remember. The one that had landed them both in the hospital and, eventually, him in jail.

  And wrecked both their careers in the process.

  It had been during the fourth week of shooting a feature for Sam Menzes. Brent had been both starring and directing. Galaxy Studios took a serious hit, claiming Brent’s madness had cost them seven million dollars. The publicity had been stupendous. The film was recast and went on to make a killing at the box office. Brent had never brought himself to watch it.

  He had already been on probation for two previous drunken driving offenses, the second of which had cost him his license. This third time, he had driven his car through the front wall of a family home, coming within four feet of an infant’s crib. There had been drugs in the car. And a gun in the glove box. The judge had sentenced him, saying, “Mr. Stark, it appears to me you’ve been begging somebody to send you away. This time I am happy to comply.”

  Celia asked, “Why do you insist on bothering me?”

  Brent nodded his thanks to Manuela for a coffee Celia had not offered. “I came before just to apologize. It’s one of the steps. To seek out those I’ve harmed and ask forgiveness.”

  “I’ll never forgive you. Not in a billion years.” She spoke with a detachment that made her declaration even more cruel. “If I could push a button and sentence you to death by a thousand cuts, I’d do it.”

  In a different era, Celia Breach would have been one of the It Girls, pinned to lockers and the controls of fighter planes by young men a long way from home. After her first film was released, one journalist described her as having a face born to demolish an entire generation of male hearts, and a body to match.

  Celia was still beautiful. But Hollywood was full of beautiful women. The accident had kept her from the public eye for almost two years. Her remaining scars were only the final relics. By the time she was ready for the lights, the public had moved on.

  “Eleven surgeries. Nine reconstructed bones. Sixteen weeks in the hospital. You think I could forgive that?”

  Brent did not answer because he was not expected to. He sipped his coffee. Even here the memories were potent. Manuela made the finest cup of coffee he had ever tasted, spiced with chicory she roasted herself and sweetened with raw cane sugar.

  “I was on the cover of every tabloid right around the world. You destroyed me. Not my career. Me. You deserved a lot worse than the judge gave you.”

  A woman’s ire was never harsher than when it turned frigid with carefully tended rage. Even so, Brent counted the fact that he was seated here a genuine miracle. “You’re right.”

  She wore a sleeveless lavender turtleneck of summer cashmere. Her white blond hair was pulled back and fastened tightly at the nape of her neck. This was no woman to adopt a hairstyle that partially masked her scars. “There’s another reason why you showed up this time?”

  “There is. Yes.”

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me you’ve gotten together the money to buy me out.”

  “No, Celia. The house is yours. I’ll never live here again.”

  “You’ve got that right. I’d poison that silly tree and rent the place to UCLA students for a dollar a year before …”

  She stopped then. Her elbow rose to rest on the back of the sofa. Her hand patted the skin where the plastic surgeon had not completely erased the damage. Brent waited, expecting another cool stab.

  Instead, Celia turned slightly, so that she angled away from him. It should have been her most unflattering angle, silhouetted such that her age and the scarring showed. Brent knew she was thirty-two, seven years younger than he, and perhaps the most beautiful woman he had ever known.

  She said to the sunlight, “What’s the use?”

  Brent felt his heart squeezed until he could scarcely breathe. A woman born to perform, to shine. Trapped inside a house, on the fringe of a world she was banned from ever entering again. “I’m so very, very sorry, Celia. I’d give anything to turn back the clock, stay sober, drive you home, or at least if I had to destroy myself, drive alone.“

  She gave no sign she had even heard him. Dust motes danced in the still air. “What are you doing these days?“

  “I run a lawn care company.“

  “You’re kidding, right?“

  “In Austin. I was paroled there.”

  “Are you doing anything on the stage?”

  “Every chance I get. Mostly local stuff.”

  “They must love that. The disgraced Hollywood actor, doing walk-ons for a local theater troupe.”

  “My first year, I got a lot of that. But they can only hammer that nail so long. It’s pretty much died down now.”

  She still spoke to the empty dining room and the rear doors. “How can you stand it?”

  Brent understood her perfectly. “Being arrested, tried three times, convicted and imprisoned taught me how to handle shame.”

  “Three?”

  “The trial, your civil case, and the court of Hollywood reporters.” He sipped from his cup. The coffee had gone cold. “Once in a while a local reporter regurgitates the whole story before getting to how I performed onstage. It still hurts.”

  “You still read the trades?”

  “Not the Hollywood ones. But the locals, sure. I’m an actor—I’ll always care what the critics say.”

  Celia turned slowly, as though drawn by unseen hands. She called, “Manuela.”

  The woman appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Yes, Miss Celia.”

  “Get Brent another coffee.”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  Manuela was already moving. “Is no problem, Mr. Brent.”

  Celia made a process of tucking her legs under her. The maid reappeared bearing a fresh cup. As Manuela set it down, Celia said, “I dreamed about you last night.”

  Manuela’s hand jerked, slopping coffee onto the saucer. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Brent. I’ll go get another.”

  “Leave it, please.” He dabbed at the saucer with his napkin. “Sorry, Celia, you were saying?”

  “It lasted about ten seconds. We were somewhere. A restaurant or someplace
, I don’t know. You said you’d come to rescue me. When I woke up, I discovered I was crying.”

  Brent heard Manuela’s quiet footsteps padding away. “Is that why you saw me today?”

  She might have shrugged. “Is it true what I heard, you got religion?”

  In the jail in LA County, while awaiting his sentence. The desperate act of a desperate man. “Yes.”

  “You’re staying sober?”

  “I haven’t had a drink since that night.”

  “I wish I hadn’t. Every time I do …”

  Brent finished the thought for her. “Flashbacks?”

  She reached for the embossed box at the center of the coffee table. She pulled out a cigarette and a slender gold lighter, and made a performance of lighting up. Brent remembered that lighter.

  Celia exhaled smoke with her words, “So now you’re going to give me the religion spiel, try to get me down on my knees?”

  “Nothing would give me a greater honor. But no, that’s not why I came. At least …”

  She seemed to lift her gaze to his despite herself. “Go on.”

  “To be honest, Celia, I came to have you shoot me down.”

  The smoke turned her voice to a honeyed rasp. “Happy to oblige.”

  “I’ve been given a chance to get back into the business. I’m here because I’m looking for a reason to run away.”

  “You’ve been offered a role?”

  “Act and direct both.”

  “Which studio?”

  “It’s an indie production.”

  “You want to turn it down? You just said you lived for the lights.”

  Brent found it necessary to set down his cup, as his hands had started trembling. “I’ve learned to live with the small gifts. A sober day. A few good friends. A couple of minutes on stage before a local audience. A night when I don’t wake up sweating and scared because I don’t know where I am or how I got there. A job I’m good at.”

  “Cutting grass.”

  “I’m outdoors. I keep places looking nice. There are worse things, Celia. A lot worse.”

  She leaned forward and stabbed the ashtray. Hard. “So just exactly why am I the one holding your fate in my hands?”

  “Because.” Brent dragged his sweaty palms down his pant legs. “I told God I’d take this on only if you agreed to be my costar.”