CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Me and Mr. Smith
“Did I ruin your girls’ night?” Nick asked. I couldn’t believe just a few hours earlier I’d given up hope of ever seeing him again.
“Never mind that,” I said, closing the door. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, um. I was at the airport, about to board the plane, when I saw your text. And I couldn’t leave. I’ve been at home all day thinking about what to say to you. I’m still not sure, but I had to see you.”
“So you changed your mind?” I was hopeful, though I knew better.
“No. I meant what I said in the letter. I would like to be friends, though. And as a friend, you deserve to know the whole truth. That’s why I came over.”
I’d spent the day coming up with arguments for why we shouldn’t break up, but they would have to wait. If he needed a friend, that’s what I’d be. “Well I’m glad you did,” I said.
He pointed his finger at me, up and down. “Have you been wearing those since the last time I was here?”
“Well your clothes are soaking wet, so you’re in no position to be critiquing my fashion choices.”
“Touché.” He acknowledged the growing puddle of water beneath his feet. “I guess I am kind of dripping all over your floor.”
“I have one of your T-shirts here if you want to change.” I didn’t want to give it back, but he looked pitiful.
He smacked his lips. “Thanks. That would be great.”
I went to the bedroom, took the shirt from under my pillow, and gave it one last sniff. When I returned to the living room I stopped short. He was standing there in nothing but his boxers, his damp pants and shirt folded neatly on the coffee table. I had to avert my eyes to keep from ogling him. That wasn’t something I got to do anymore.
“Uh, here you go.” I thrust the shirt in his general direction and busied myself with the clothes on the table so I didn’t have to watch him put it on. “I’ll hang these up to dry.”
“Appreciate it,” he said.
In the bathroom I hung his shirt and jeans over my shower door. In the mirror a worn-out, muddled version of myself stared back. It wasn’t my best look, but it was an accurate representation of my mood. I shook it off and returned to the living room. He was sitting on the couch, now clothed in boxers and the T-shirt I still thought of as mine. I sat at the other end, giving him plenty of space.
“How did you find out?” he asked, jumping right in.
I took my wine glass from the table and sipped. “That’s kind of a long story. Um, there was this car following me—“
He dropped the pretense of detachment for a moment, clearly worried for me. “What? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I confronted the driver last night and—”
“You did what?” He sounded like a father scolding his teenage daughter, but it was nice to know he still cared.
“Just listen, okay?” I reached out and put my hand on his bare knee, then caught myself and jerked it away. “Turned out the guy was a private investigator.”
“A P.I.? Like in the movies?”
“I know! That’s what I thought. But he was the real deal. I still have his card here somewhere.”
I went to the desk and rummaged through the drawer for the card. When I handed it to him he turned it over in his hand, not sure what to make of it. He put it down on the coffee table and looked up. “So then what? Did he say who hired him?”
“No, but he knew I was a reporter. He gave me Dana’s name and told me to look into her. So I did.”
“And what did you find?” He seemed hesitant, like he didn’t really want to know the answer.
“A group picture from a high school dance, like a prom or something. You were both in it. I’m guessing she was your girlfriend?”
He nodded and looked at me. His eyes were weary, with no trace of their usual incandescence. “We got together senior year and went to U-dub together. After we graduated she got into law school at UCLA. I wanted to pursue acting so we moved down here together.” He gave a derisive snort. I’d worked out most of that already, but I let him continue, uninterrupted. “Those were tough years. I was gone a lot, working my ass off trying to make it as an actor. Bartending at night to pay the rent. A lot of long hours, late nights. I wasn’t there for her.”
I was beginning to see the roots of his love/hate relationship with show business and what he believed he’d sacrificed for success. No matter how many fans adored him, his guilt would never let him feel deserving of their love.
“She was the one who wanted the pool. We’d just relocated from the Pacific Northwest and we were looking at rentals. She said she’d always dreamed of living someplace where she could go swimming in January.” He shook his head, lost in the memory.
“I read she accidentally drowned,” I said gently.
“That’s what the police said. But I don’t know. She’d always struggled with depression. Most of the time she managed it fine, but . . . it got worse. I’d been working on a film all day and then I went straight to my job the bar. I came home after 2 a.m. and found her there in the pool. I’ll never forget the way the pool lights lit her up from beneath. She was wearing this white nightgown thing and her hair kind of billowed all around her. She looked like a mermaid.” His eyes glistened, focused somewhere in the distance.
I said, “I’m so sorry, Nick,” but I wasn’t sure he heard me. I moved closer to him and took his hand in mine. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.”
He sniffed, returning to the present, and let go of my hand. “There’s more,” he said, slowly and with enormous effort, as if the words were fighting against him.
“Go on,” I gently urged.
He was quiet for a long time. Then he took a deep breath. “I’ve tried really hard to keep this off the radar. I changed my last name. Archer is actually my mother’s maiden name. I hired people to bury everything. I didn’t even know you could do that. My manager at the time thought it was necessary. Of course, they didn’t see you coming.” He gave me a faint smile, a moment of light in the darkness.
It was a lot to take in. I focused on the one thing I could get my head around. “So what’s your real name?”
“You’re going to laugh, but it’s Smith.”
I did laugh. Such a common name for someone so remarkable. “Your name is Nick Smith?”
“Nicolas Smith”— he held out his hand for me to shake — “Nice to meet you.”
It was a fleeting touch and I didn’t want it to end, but I finally gave him back his hand. “Wow. No one has outed you all these years? Friends? Family?”
“What can I say? My mom’s the only real family I have. And I’ve had the same small circle of friends since kindergarten. They knew Dana too. They would never betray me.”
No one could erase their past completely. All it would have taken was one former schoolmate with a grudge or an old neighbor looking to cash in on his fame and his secret would have been out a long time ago. He’d been very lucky up until that point, but his luck was running out.
“You said there was more,” I reminded him.
He rubbed his hands on his thighs. “Right. Here goes. A few months before Dana died, she, uh . . . she had a baby. Our baby. A little girl. It wasn’t planned, but we were happy when we found out she was pregnant. Sophie was born in the summer, after Dana’s second year of law school. We were going to get married at Christmas. But . . . Dana developed postpartum depression. It hit her hard. She lost interest in everything, school, me, the baby. Slept a lot. Didn’t take care of herself. I’m grateful she had the presence of mind to send the baby to the neighbors that night.”
I was speechless. “So, you’re . . . you have—“
“A daughter. Yes. She’ll be eight in August.” It took me a minute to adjust to the idea of Nick as a dad. But only a minute. Then I could see it clearly.
“Sophie.” The tried out the name on my tongue. It felt natural, like it belonged there. I really wanted to meet her. “Where is she now?”
“After Dana died I wasn’t in any condition to raise a kid. Not to mention supporting her on a bartender’s salary and what I could scrape together from acting. Then this big movie role came along, The Carriage House. It was filming in North Carolina, so I sent her up to Seattle to stay with Dana’s parents. It was supposed to be temporary. But when the movie was over I went back to get her and they had this gorgeous nursery set up. I remember it had a Noah’s Ark theme. Animals marching around the room, two by two. They were talking about pediatricians and 529 plans and getting her on the waiting list for the best preschools. I felt totally inadequate. you know? I hadn’t thought about all that stuff. So I decided she’d be better off with them. And when Carriage House took off, everything just kind of snowballed. I booked more jobs. People started paying attention and I wanted to keep her as far from the spotlight as possible. She deserved a chance to grow up like a normal kid.”
His eyes were swimming by the time he finished. I stroked his hair as he bent forward, head in his hands. “You did what you thought was best for her.”
“Did I, though?” His voice broke, raw as I’d ever heard it. “She was the last piece of Dana I had and I sent her away. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about her. And the movie, that damned movie, follows me everywhere I go. People see it as this great romantic love story but all I see is a choice I’ll regret for the rest of my life.”
The tears welling up in his eyes finally spilled over onto the floor, joining the tiny pools that hadn’t yet dried. I put my hand on his knee again. This time I left it there. “Do you get to see her much?”
“Less and less. We talk all the time, but I keep thinking about what would it be like if she lived here with me. Would she even want to?”
I thought about the room in his house with the closed door, the room I’d never seen. I had a pretty good idea what was behind that door now.
“Have you asked her?” I said, bending my head to meet his eyes.
He straightened and collected himself, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “It might not matter. Sophie’s grandparents contacted me last week. They’re planning to file for full custody.”
“They can’t do that can they? I mean, you’re her father.”
“I think they’re the ones who hired the detective. They’re trying to find evidence to show the judge I can’t provide a stable home environment. I don’t want to rip her away from the people who raised her, but they have a distorted idea of the kind of life I live here. They think Hollywood is a bad influence. If they’re able to control when I can and can’t see her, I’m worried they’ll never let me near her again.”
Enter one girlfriend with a very public sex video. “And my video getting out didn’t help with that.”
“I’m so sorry you got dragged into this. They must have started investigating you when they couldn’t find anything on me.”
“So that’s why you were so upset? And why you were trying so hard to get the video taken down?”
He sighed. “Right.”
“And I accused you of only caring about your career. Wow, I suck.”
“You didn’t know. I’m the one who sucks for putting you in that position in the first place. You were really upset and I couldn’t see past my own problems to be there for you when you needed me. Can you forgive me?”
“I think you need to forgive yourself first.” I knew it would take time and it wouldn’t be easy, but he was on his way. He’d taken the first steps tonight by telling me the truth. I could tell he already felt lighter. “As for me, I was pissed at Adam and took it out on you. There’s nothing to forgive.”
“I’m glad, because there’s one more thing I want to ask of you. If all of this is going to come out, and I think with this custody battle it’s only a matter of time, I want you to be the one to tell it.”
I looked up, stunned. When I quit Hollywood Beat I thought I’d left my conflicts of interest behind me. “Are you sure?”
“I’ll give you an interview, no holds barred, everything on the record. You can ask me whatever you want. With your talent as a writer you could sell it anywhere — Variety, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone. It could be a big break for you.”
It felt wrong, like I was exploiting his tragedy for my own personal gain. “No. I couldn’t do that.”
“You’re the only reporter I trust. I won’t talk to anyone else. You understand me and I know you’d be fair. Call it a win-win.”
“But how can I be objective? I’m part of the story.”
“That’s what makes you the best person to write it. Come on. What do you say?”
All of my arguments shot down, there was nothing left but to consider it. I’d told Jackie it wasn’t ethical for me to write about Nick while we were in a relationship, but technically we weren’t anymore. And this wasn’t some editor asking me to dig into his past, it was Nick himself asking. I could write it as a first-person narrative, from my point of view. I wasn’t objective, so why try to be? For the past two months I’d had a front-row seat to the inner life of one of Hollywood’s most private celebrities. The pitch started coming together in my head.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” I said finally. He looked relieved.
“Great. You ready?” he asked, surprising me again with his anxiousness to get right to it.
“You want to do this now?“
“Now is as good a time as any. I still have to fly up to Vancouver tomorrow. This might be the only chance we have to talk face to face.”
I suddenly realized we’d been leading to this moment from the very beginning. These secrets he’d been carrying around with him for so long had become too heavy to bear on his own. He’d wanted to unburden himself to someone and, whether he knew it consciously or not, I think he chose me that day at the junket. Falling in love was just a side effect.
I reached out and wiped away the last remaining tear from his cheek with the pad of my thumb. He closed his eyes and I kissed him once, softly. It felt like a kiss goodbye.
“What the hell,” I said, getting up to retrieve my digital recorder. “Let’s do this.”