Twice, page 12
I didn’t really have a plausible lie, so I made the mistake of telling her about my stock success.
“You don’t follow the stock market,” she said.
“I had a hunch.”
“About a computer company?”
“Someone at the magazine suggested it,” I said, lying.
She stared at me, then poked her pasta with a fork.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s luck money,” she said.
“What’s ‘luck money’?”
“The kind you don’t earn. It doesn’t feel right.”
I exhaled. “Can’t you just enjoy it?”
Her expression changed. She took my hand. “I’m sorry, Alfie. This is really sweet. You strike it rich—and you think of me. I do love you for that.”
We kissed, but I felt so bad that I time jumped back an hour and kept the ring in my pocket. We had a great night anyhow. And I learned another Truth About True Love: it doesn’t have to cost you anything.
Even when it might cost you everything.
✶
So now. To what made me famous.
I was sent to Mexico by Life magazine to do a story about a distance runner who was deaf due to a birth defect. The young man, named Jaimie, was supremely gifted; at age eighteen he had already set a world record in the 1500 meters. He was hoping to compete in the Atlanta Olympics later that year. His family lived in a small village. His father had died, and Jaimie worked as a dishwasher in his mother’s restaurant. Her name was Marisol, only thirty-five herself, but older-looking from the endless hours she spent in the restaurant kitchen. The small profits she made went to pay for her son’s training.
We used a sign language translator for our interviews. Jaimie was a sweet kid with a sharp sense of humor. At one point he lent me a pair of his running shoes, and we did a few laps together around a track, with me desperately trying to keep up. When we finished, he signed to his translator, “Ask him when I can take the chains off my legs.”
I stayed for a few days. The morning I was scheduled to leave, Jaimie, Marisol, the photographer, and I were heading to the restaurant when we stopped at a bank to make a deposit. It was a small branch, with one teller and a couple of desks. The door was open to the heat.
Jaimie signed to his mother that he would fill out the deposit slip while the photographer took Marisol across the way to get some shots. A minute later, three men in sweat suits entered the bank. I watched two of them move quickly to the teller. The third lingered by the door. I turned my attention back to Marisol and the photographer.
Suddenly, I heard a gunshot. I spun and saw the man by the door holding a pistol in the air. He started screaming in Spanish and everyone inside—Marisol, the photographer, the workers, the other customers, and me—all dropped to the ground.
All except Jaimie.
His back was turned so he couldn’t see what was going on, and obviously, being deaf, he couldn’t hear the commotion. The gunman shouted at him and drew closer, waving his pistol. But Jaimie had his head lowered, writing. He never saw the guy until he snatched away the deposit envelope. Jaimie instinctively lunged for it, and the gunman shot him twice in the thigh.
Marisol screamed. Jaimie crumpled to the floor. The three robbers raced out the door. Suddenly the place was silent, save for the agonizing cries of a young athlete holding his bleeding leg and likely wondering if his future had just been erased.
I panicked. I’d never seen anyone shot before. I slammed my eyes shut and shouted “Twice!” But the image in my head was of us entering the bank. Instantly, we were there again, Jaimie heading to fill out the deposit slip, Marisol and the photographer moving to the window.
I froze. I hadn’t gone back far enough. Before I could even yell anything, the three men walked in, and two of them again headed to the teller. My head swiveled from them to Marisol to the guy at the door.
BANG! The gunman fired and yelled at Jaimie, and the only thing I could think to do was run for him. If I could get him to the ground, maybe the gunman would leave him alone. I sprinted Jaimie’s way and saw him glance up just as I dove for his legs, tackling him like a linebacker. I heard the gun fire and the teller screaming and I felt Jaimie beneath me and a hot sting in my shoulder. The three robbers raced out the door and I fell off Jaimie and glanced down to a mess of blood around my collarbone.
“Alfie!” the photographer yelled. “Oh my God, you’re shot!”
I shut my eyes and whispered “Twice-twice-twice!” but nothing happened—I’d redone the moment already—and as I clamped my jaw against this newfound pain, I realized that whatever followed, this was one mistake I was going to have to live with.
✶
The bullet, thank God, went straight through. I spent a week in a Mexico City hospital before they let me go home. Gianna was waiting at the airport. She burst into tears when she saw my arm in a sling.
“Oh, no, no, no, Alfie—”
“It’s OK,” I said as she threw her arms around me. “Could be worse.”
“You got shot. How could it be worse?”
There were a million answers to that. But I said nothing. Gianna tended to me during the weeks that followed in a gentle, loving way that showed itself in all the small things—my coffee waiting in the morning, an extra pillow for my shoulder, a bottle of ibuprofen on my nightstand, a second washcloth prepared after cleaning my wound with the first one.
I must admit, I wasn’t the best patient. Not because of the injury, but because Life wanted the whole story, and quickly, and typing one-handed was pretty difficult. Meanwhile, other people were interviewing Jaimie, who credited me with saving his life. When he made the Olympic team in Atlanta, he announced as a tribute he would race in the shoes that he’d lent me.
He won his event by more than two seconds, again setting a new world record. I was there to witness it. At his press conference, he asked me up onstage.
“Without Mr. Alfie Logan,” he signed, “I would never have this.” He held up his gold medal and put his arm around my neck. Cameras whirred and flashes popped.
As you might imagine, the story took off. Suddenly I was getting calls from TV shows to do interviews with Jaimie and Marisol. We appeared on several programs, and the crowds were enthusiastic. It didn’t hurt that Jaimie had a great smile, while his mother, who did the signing for him, was humble and funny. I let them tell the tale of the bank robbery. They made me sound braver than I was.
One day, after the three of us did a morning talk show in New York, I returned home to find two voicemails on my answering machine, both from movie executives in California interested in buying the Life magazine story for a film. I listened to their messages with Gianna.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think you told the story already.”
“But not as a movie.”
“It wasn’t a movie.”
That silenced me. Gianna had a talent for saying one thing that dammed up a conversation faster than a cork in a bottle.
✶
In hindsight, I wish I’d left it there. But I didn’t. I was intrigued by the idea of a film. I knew a literary agent from my magazine work, and I asked him to get involved. He made some calls, talking up the story. The next thing I knew, I was flying to Los Angeles to meet with multiple interested parties, which my agent said was the best possible scenario.
“Just tell the tale as dramatically as you can,” he instructed, “and before you leave let them know you’re meeting with other people. I’ll do the rest.”
And so, to rooms full of fascinated faces, I told the story again and again during four studio meetings. The first three were largely the same. An airy office and a sizable conference table. Bottles of Perrier. Young executives cooing about the drama of the robbery while tossing around names of famous actors who could play the various parts.
Just before the last meeting, in a huge conference room on a high floor of a Hollywood talent agency, I asked if I could use the phone to call Gianna. She sounded frustrated when she answered.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“The shutter broke on my camera. I just had it fixed last year. Now I have to take it in again.”
“We should buy a new camera.”
“I don’t need a new camera. I just need a shutter that works.”
“Sorry.”
“I was hoping to go to the Bronx Zoo tomorrow.”
“Again?”
“Yes, again. Why?”
“Nothing.”
The zoo was all she had left of her photography dreams. She often went there when I was out of town.
“Well, I hope you can fix it,” I said.
“I will. Sorry. I’m just frustrated. How are your meetings going?”
“Good, I think. They seem interested.”
“When are you coming home?”
Just then the door swung open and four people entered. Three of them looked like the other executives I had met, young men in jeans, baseball caps, shirts untucked, but the fourth was a woman you would have noticed from another zip code. I knew her face from the movies, but when you see such a familiar face in the flesh, you blink, as if something about it can’t be real. Her hair was blond as wheat, her eyes shielded by amber sunglasses, her skin perfectly tanned, her teeth almost impossibly white. But it was the command with which she moved that captivated me. I wondered: Do stars become stars because of a quality the rest of us don’t have, or is it learned? Either way, she took my breath.
“Alfie . . . ?” I heard Gianna say again. “When are you coming home?”
“Let me call you back. We’re gonna start.”
I hung up before she finished her “OK” as the woman approached and extended her hand.
“Hi, I’m Nicolette Pink,” she said.
“I know,” I mumbled back.
✶
Now, I’ll spare you all the business details that followed, Boss. Suffice it to say a bidding war ensued, as my agent had predicted, and we had multiple offers to make the movie for a crazy price, but ultimately chose the studio that had Nicolette Pink as its partner, because she wanted to direct the film and star in it as Marisol. She was, at the time, maybe the biggest actress in the country, the winner of several major awards, although her most popular film was a raunchy comedy in which she played an oversexed high school teacher.
We signed the papers and they sent me a sizable check—and another to Jaimie and Marisol in Mexico. They hired a big-name screenwriter who wrote a script that only loosely followed the real story. He took numerous liberties, including this one: instead of me being married, in the movie I was single and ended up falling in love with Marisol (played by Nicolette, with her blond hair colored a sable shade). The explanation was that the film “needed a love story.” I had no say in this—you give away such rights when you take the money—and was completely surprised when I read it.
But not as surprised as Gianna.
“What is this?” she asked, holding out the script like a smelly fish.
“What?”
“You’re single? You fall in love with Jaimie’s mother?”
“I know.” I sighed. “It’s just a movie.”
“So they make things up?”
“I guess.”
“Doesn’t Jaimie think it’s stupid? Or Marisol?”
“They probably don’t care.”
“They’re using your real name.”
“I know.”
“And theirs.”
“Because it’s based on a true story.”
“But this—” She held up the script. “Is not a true story.”
“What do you want me to do, Gianna?”
She shook her head. “You already did what I didn’t want you to do. Why ask me now?”
She tossed the script on the couch.
“You don’t want to finish it?” I asked.
“Why should I? Like you said, it’s a movie. I’ll watch it when it comes out.” She looked away. “Or I won’t.”
“Hey, I’m sorry,” I said, leaning down and touching her knees. “It’s out of my hands.”
I saw she was crying.
“It’s wrong,” she rasped. “You falling in love with someone else.”
“I know.”
“Can’t you give the money back? Tell them no thanks?”
“They gave money to Jaimie and Marisol, too, remember? They need it.”
She exhaled and looked away. For a while she said nothing.
“What?” I whispered. “Gianna. Talk to me.”
“I want to have a baby.”
I swallowed.
“All right.”
“All right?” she repeated.
Her face changed. Her eyes lifted. Her smile lit me up. I’d do anything for that smile. Even something I didn’t mean.
Which is what I had just done.
✶
Now, at this point, Boss, you’re likely saying “I don’t remember a film with Nicolette Pink where she played a runner’s mother and fell in love with a journalist.” There’s a reason for that, which I will detail. But I need to explain something bigger first. Something that changed my life with Gianna forever.
The movie was being shot in Mexico, and I spent a lot of time on the set, at Nicolette’s request. Because Jaimie was in training, and Marisol was running her restaurant, I was the only one available to verify certain details, especially with the actor playing me. Nicolette encouraged that. She was highly focused and professional during the shoot. But at night, when she invited me to view the edits of the day’s filming, she often let her guard down. We spoke candidly. She was honest and quick-witted.
One late session, she shared stories about her life as an actress, the lewd advances she had to tolerate from producers and directors when she was coming up, and their constant emphasis on her looks, weight, and skin.
“I wouldn’t think you’d have to worry about that,” I said.
“You’d be surprised,” she replied. “This”—she waved a hand at herself—“takes a lot of work. And you’re never not ‘on’ in this business.”
“Why did you go into it?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. I had a lousy childhood. I came to California on my own when I was still a teenager. I was running away from who I was, the stuff I’d gone through. Acting, getting to pretend you’re someone else, seemed like a good way of dealing with all that, I guess. Like you’re getting a second chance, you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, trying to ignore the irony.
She smiled and leaned back. Her tapered white shirt clung to her thin waist.
“There was a movie once named Alfie,” she said. “Did you ever see it?”
“No. But my mother nicknamed me for it. Well. For that song.”
“No way.”
“Yeah.”
“Alfie was a ladies’ man, you know.”
“That’s what I’ve heard.”
“What’s it all about, Alfie?” she warbled, singing the first line from that song, the way everybody does. Then she reached for the hair behind my left ear. “Ooh . . . you’ve got a real cowlick sticking out here.”
“Sorry,” I said. I felt a jolt though my body when she touched me.
“Why are you sorry?” She pressed it down gently. “It’s not a flaw.”
“Right. Yeah. Sorry. I mean. You know.”
She turned back to the screen, then slumped, as if it were homework.
“My eyes are blurry,” she said. “Do you want to get a drink?”
Nassau
“Jesus,” LaPorta mumbled.
“What are you reading?” Sampson said.
“The suspect’s notebook. It’s all garbage, I think.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You know that actress Nicolette Pink?”
“From the high school teacher movie?”
“Yeah. He says she made a movie about him.”
“What was it called?”
LaPorta flipped through pages. “I don’t even know. It was about a Mexican robbery and a writer who gets shot.”
Sampson shrugged. “Never saw it.”
“Me neither.”
LaPorta undid his safety belt, which was digging into his shoulder. He studied the gnarled traffic.
“How much longer?”
“If I cut behind the bus depot up ahead, I can swing around south of the beach and get to the hotel that way. Maybe ten minutes.”
“Do it.”
As Sampson eased the car over, LaPorta reached for his cell phone and called the police officer who was taking Alfie to jail.
“Hello, sir?” the officer answered.
“Everything good?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Suspect with you?”
“He’s in the back . . . Wait . . .”
LaPorta heard muffled conversation.
“He says he wants to talk to you.”
LaPorta squeezed his fingers between his eyes. “All right. Put him on.”
A long pause. Then.
“Vincent?”
“You call me Detective.”
“Detective. Are you still reading?”
LaPorta sighed. “I’m stuck in traffic, so as a matter of fact, I am.”
“Where I marked?”
“You mean the bent page?”
“You found it?”
“Very clever. What difference does it make?”
“All the difference, if you finish.”
“I’m a little busy, Alf—”
“If you want to make sense with Gianna, you’ll need to finish.”
“OK, lover boy, thanks for the tip.”
Sampson glanced over. LaPorta made a face, as if to say This guy is nuts.
“Why don’t you concentrate on confessing, Alfie? Let me worry about your ex-wife.”
“She won’t understand,” Alfie said.
“Oh, I’ll be very clear. Especially about the two million.”
“She’ll say she doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That won’t surprise me.”
A pause. “Something else will.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Keep reading, Vincent.”
He hung up.
The Composition Book
My father died nine years ago, Boss. Remember when we were working in Morocco and I asked for some time off? I actually went home to Philadelphia. I never told you, because I didn’t want you feeling sorry for me. You didn’t know my dad. Not in this life, anyhow. There was an earlier time when you met him. Spoke to him. Even laughed with him. But I had to undo those moments, and you’ll have no recollection of them. Revealing this might make you rack your brain. Spare yourself. When I wipe a slate, I wipe it clean.
