TWENTY-ONE

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“I told you.”

Of course that was the wrong thing to say to Amanda. You could disagree with her, but not that loudly. And not with that kind of look on your face—the kind that said she was an arrogant, self-centered know-it-all, despite all the yapping she did about having her clients’ best interests at heart.

She had herself at heart. Always had, always would.

Pretty much everybody did, when you came down to it, and almost nowhere was that as true as it was in Hollywood, but some people turned it into a fine art. And of course those were the people who ended up being admired. Envied. Lauded as being an enormous success.

“Are you done?” Amanda asked.

There was a note in her voice that Doug couldn’t remember having heard before. It certainly wasn’t remorse, but it also wasn’t the tone that said, You’re done. You’ve got five minutes to get out of the building.

As he stopped, he realized he’d been pacing back and forth across Amanda’s soft gray carpet. He’d left a noticeable path in the nap, a narrow trail that led from the door to the sofa at the opposite end of the room.

“You should have told her, Amanda. Let her decide.”

“The surprise is part of the premise.”

She sounded like a child. Or someone with a fantastic case of detachment. After everything he’d said the other day, she still didn’t see the problem with blindsiding someone like that, like they’d done to Katie—and presumably, just like the Hollywood Match team was doing to their other three targets. Were they all women? he wondered. Or were men being duped too?

As if she’d heard his thoughts, Amanda said evenly, “The second episode is Tony Argentilli.”

“Really.”

“I can’t imagine he’ll have a tantrum and go running off the set.”

Doug couldn’t imagine it either, in spite of Argentilli’s reputation for having somewhat of a hair trigger. He was a guy, after all, and being pursued by four or five beautiful women was something he could brag about to all his buddies. He could hook up with one of them, or all of them, or none of them, and there’d be no harm done.

Or maybe there would be, but no one would ever talk about it.

“She’s exhausted,” he said after a minute. “You’ve been running her ragged since filming for last season ended. She needs a break, Amanda.”

“So she can drop completely off the map?”

“So she can have a life. One that’s not controlled by ratings and popularity.”

“If that’s what she wants, then she shouldn’t have come out here in the first place. You don’t come here and tinker, Douglas. You either want to succeed, or you don’t. And if you don’t, you ought to get out of the way so that the people who do want to succeed don’t have to climb over you to get there.”

That was all true enough, he supposed.

Either fight to your last breath, or get out of the way. But what kind of a way was that to live?

“Are you happy, Amanda?”

The question got out before he could stop it.

No one else who worked here would have dared to ask it. Even Doug himself wouldn’t have, as little as a couple of days ago. It was none of his business whether Amanda felt happy, or satisfied, or content, or something else altogether. Even though her state of mind would (presumably) affect the business, would have a bearing on whether any of them would still have a job tomorrow, or a week from now, or a year from now, it was still not his problem.

“That I set her up?” Amanda asked smoothly. “I suppose I ought to say no, given how badly it went.”

“I don’t mean about that. I mean, are you happy?”

“We aren’t here to be happy, Douglas. We’re here to keep the machinery running.” Before he could respond to the coldness of that, she went on. “I think you have an idea how many people work here. In Los Angeles. In the entertainment business. How many work in other places around the world, with threads that all lead back here. Actors. Singers. Dancers. Producers. Writers. Set designers. Gaffers. Seamstresses. Truck drivers. It’s hundreds of thousands of people, Douglas. Hundreds of thousands of people here in this city and around the world who rely on the machinery of this business to provide them with a paycheck.”

The truth in that made his mind reel a little.

“You know how big an effect it had when the writers went on strike a few years ago,” she said. “How big the trickle-down was. Production shut down on everything. No one was being paid. Therefore, no one was shopping. Going out to eat. That affected waiters and bartenders. Store clerks.”

“I remember.”

“It wasn’t just a case of, ‘Oh, no. There aren’t any new episodes of my favorite show.’ People couldn’t pay their rent. Couldn’t feed their children. It’s a web, Douglas. It’s all a big, delicate web.”

“Which doesn’t make what we did all right.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“You can’t just manipulate people, Amanda. You can’t just use them. The end doesn’t justify the means.”

“Doesn’t it?” she repeated.

He caught a glimpse of his reflection on the screen of her enormous TV. It was just a pale, blurry shape, but he could see the sag in his posture and the way his left hand kept twitching. He knew he didn’t look anywhere near as put-together as Amanda insisted they all be, but given the way he’d felt as he got dressed this morning, it was a wonder he hadn’t shown up in sweatpants and an old t-shirt.

Really, it was a wonder he’d shown up at all.

“Is this where you tell me that you don’t think you can go on doing this?” she asked. “That it offends your sensibilities, and you’re going to run off to some quiet rural place and become a veterinarian?”

“Please don’t mock me, Amanda.”

“You’re a part of all of this as much as any of us,” she pointed out. “You’re not blameless.”

“I know I’m not.”

“But part of you would like to think you are. That you operate by some higher standard.” She chuckled, and it sounded almost like a snort. “You know how it all works. And so does she. So does she.”

“Would he be happy with you?” Doug demanded, jabbing a finger at the framed photograph of Amanda’s late husband, the man who—even though he’d been gone for years now—seemed to oversee everything that went on here. “Is this really what he wanted for you?”

“Of course. He paid to set it all up.”

“To make you happy. So I’ll repeat the question: Are you happy?”

She’d sidestepped that the first time. This time, something that might have been regret passed through her eyes.

It only lasted a second before she blinked it away.

“I miss him with every breath I take. There isn’t a single day when I don’t feel as if I’m walking around in a void. So the answer is no, Douglas. I have to go on living without the love of my life. It’s not possible for me to be happy.”

“And misery loves company?”

“I think you should go now,” she said. “You’re clearly tired. Take the rest of the day off.”

“Just today?”

“I’ll leave that up to you. But I can be pushed just so far.”

“Fair enough,” Doug replied.

 

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

 

L.A. was no place to drive around aimlessly. Having spent most of his life there, Doug knew spending even a little time behind the wheel would end up frustrating him at best, and at worst result in a fender bender. But he couldn’t imagine sitting still, either, being cooped up in a room somewhere.

After a few minutes of thought, pacing back and forth alongside his car, he got in and headed north.

Toward Porterville. Toward his grandfather’s hardware store.

Three hours later, he was hugging the old man, who at 78 was still as energetic and enthusiastic as he’d been half a century before. He still came in to work every day, still offered advice to his customers, still ventured out at least a couple of times a week to unclog a garbage disposal or set up some mousetraps. Doug envied him sometimes, because his grandfather’s life was so straightforward.

And because his grandfather never felt the need to deceive anyone.

“You look good,” Pop said, standing back to take a better look at his grandson. “You staying for dinner?”

“If I’m invited.”

“When are you not?” Pop replied with a chuckle. “Your grandmother’s always got enough for one more.”

For a while, they puttered, shelving some plumbing fixtures Pop pulled out of their cardboard cartons. As always, the old man whistled a little as he worked, and as always, Doug had no clue what the song was. Sometimes it sounded rock ’n’ roll-ish; sometimes, more like something a swing band would have played in a ballroom back in the ’40s. Either way, the sound made Doug feel at home, comforted and safe, the way he’d felt during his summer visits to Porterville when he was a kid.

Then, all of a sudden, the work was done, and there were no customers in the shop. It was that time in the late afternoon when the daylight came in at a slant, and if you looked at it just right, you could see dust motes in the air. Young Doug, at the age of 6 or 7, had told himself they were magical.

That you could wish on them.

Then turn around three times with your eyes closed tight, and if the Dust King was in a good mood, your wish would come true.

He opened his eyes to find Pop looking at him quizzically.

“I needed a little peace and quiet,” he told his grandfather. “Things were getting to me.”

“You’re always welcome here.”

“I think I made a mistake, Pop. I let myself get mixed up in something I knew was wrong. The job, you know? It was what the boss wanted, and I went along with it, even though I knew better.”

“That happens to the best of us.”

Once in a while, Pop would grow thoughtful and would provide some small detail about his time in the service. He’d seen combat for only a few months, but that was more than enough to shift his state of mind, he said. He’d come home seeing things differently. Thinking differently about people, whether he knew them or not.

He’d had to follow some orders, he said. Do things that made him ashamed of himself.

For the greater good. To help win the war.

But nobody’d won that war. Nobody. And Pop had come home with a damaged leg that still made him limp more than fifty years later, that still ached in damp weather enough to make him cry.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t the leg that made him cry.

“I should have known better,” Doug told him softly. “I want the job. I’m good at the job. But I want to think I’ve got integrity. That I can stop myself before I hurt somebody who doesn’t deserve to be hurt.”

“One of your clients?”

“Yes.”

Pop shook his head and sighed. “Not sure what I’d do in a business like that, where if you win, somebody else loses. Every time somebody spouts that line, ‘It’s an honor just to be nominated,’ I have to wonder. But that was the business your dad wanted to be in, and now you’re doing it too.”

“It’s more complicated than hardware, for sure.”

“Yup,” Pop said. “You very seldom break somebody’s heart with plumbing supplies or lawn mowers.”

Ready to close the store for the day, he led the way to the front door, locked it, and flipped the sign in the window from OPEN to CLOSED. Then he went to the counter and began to count the money in the register.

“Can you make amends?” he asked Doug.

“I don’t know that the boss wants me to. I think she feels it would be a mistake.”

“You think.”

“She’s always got that ‘You know what you signed up for’ attitude.”

Pop’s expression shifted, and his hand trembled enough that he had to put down the little stack of bills he was holding. Doug knew without asking that his grandfather had just slipped back in time half a century, and in his mind’s eye he was seeing things he wished he’d never seen.

“You don’t, though,” Pop said. “You never know exactly what it is you’re signing up for. You can guess at it, and you can go by what’s happened to other people, but it’s never going to be the same. It’s all a crap shoot. Things happen that nobody ever expected.”

“Or they told themselves that it would never happen to them.”

“That’s about right.” Still bothered—that was plain on his face—Pop picked up the stack of bills, then put it down again. “If you’re asking what I’d do, I’d try to make amends. Sometimes you don’t get to do that, you know. Sometimes, it’s all over and done, and there’s no pieces left to pick up. But if you’ve got God’s grace, if you’ve got the chance to say ‘I’m sorry’, I’d go do it, and don’t waste the opportunity. You don’t know what’s lying around the next turn in the road.”

He’d offer the same heartfelt advice to anyone who asked for it, Doug was sure. One of the things his grandfather liked best about running this store was that it was so quiet that people felt able to come in here and talk to him. Not just about clogged garbage disposals, but about their lives. They all knew Joe Belford to be a good, honest man who wanted only the best for his friends and neighbors, the kind of man who’d sit you down and feed you if you were hungry, whether it was food you needed, or a kind word, or some of the money out of that cash register.

“There’s something else,” Doug admitted to the old man.

A smile dawned across Pop’s face. It said he’d seen that coming, that he knew this was the real reason Doug had driven all the way up here on a Wednesday afternoon when he was supposed to have been at work.

“What’s her name?” Pop asked, and there was so much love in his expression that it nearly took Doug’s breath away.

“Katie,” Doug said. “Her name is Katie.”