She sighed deeply. “I’m doing this all wrong. As usual. I wasn’t going to say anything today, but now I have. So, okay, here it is. I want Alex to have a two-parent life. I want him to know you, and believe it or not, I want you to know him. For everyone’s sake. Even mine.”
I took a step back, and her hand fell limply away. “I don’t know what to say to that, Christine. I think it’s obvious that I wanted the same thing. You’re the one who decided to move out here to Seattle.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s what I really wanted to speak with you about. I’m thinking of moving back to Virginia. I’m almost sure that’s what I’m going to do.”
My mind, finally, was completely blown.
Chapter 56
VANCOUVER WAS ONE of the storyteller’s favorite cities—along with London, Berlin, and Copenhagen. He flew up there on Alaska Air and arrived just in time to wait on a long line with about five hundred “visitors” from Korea and China. Vancouver was crawling with Chinese and Koreans, but that was about the only thing he didn’t like about the beautiful Canadian seaport, and it seemed a minor complaint.
He had some movie business in town that took up most of the day and also put him in a dark mood. By five or so that night he was in a wretched state of mind, and he needed to get the bottled-up anger out somehow.
Know what I need? To tell somebody what’s going on, to share.
Maybe not tell everything, but some of it—at least an idea of how incredible this whole thing was, this totally strange period of his life, this wilding, as he’d come to call it, this story.
There was this foxy red-haired producer he knew who was in Vancouver to shoot a TV movie. Maybe he should connect with her. Tracey Willett had her own wilding period in Hollywood, starting when she was eighteen and continuing into her late twenties. She’d had a kid since and had apparently cooled her jets some.
But she kept in touch with him, and that had to mean something. He’d always been able to talk to Tracey, and about almost anything.
So he called her, and sure enough, she said she’d love to have dinner and drinks with him. About an hour later, Tracey called back from the movie set. The movie shoot was running late. Not her fault, he knew. Probably some hack director’s fault. Some disorganized, arrogant, glorified art director two or three years out of film school.
So he didn’t get to see Tracey until past eleven, when she came over to his room at the Marriott. She gave him a big hug and a sloppy kiss, and she looked pretty good for having worked all day. “I missed you, sweetcakes. I missed you so much. Where have you been? You look great by the way. So thin, good thin, though. The lean-and-hungry look, right? It suits you.”
He didn’t know whether Tracey was still into blow, or booze, or whatever, so he had a little of everything on hand, and that’s what they did—just about everything. He knew right away she wanted to fool around, because she told him she was horny for one of the stunt men on the movie and because of the way she sat on the couch, legs set apart, looking him up and down with those bedroom eyes of hers, hungry eyes, just as he remembered. Finally, Tracey pulled up her top and said, “Well?”
So he took her to bed, where she complimented his new lean body again. Tracey did a little more coke; then she took off her blouse to let him admire her tits some more. He remembered the drill with Tracey—you had to talk about how sexy she was and touch her everywhere for about twenty minutes, then at least thirty minutes of very energetic humping because Tracey couldn’t have an orgasm to save her life, and was always getting so close, but never quite there, so keep going, harder, faster, harder, faster, oh baby, baby, baby. And when he came inside her, she seemed to like it, and she held him close as if they were a couple again, even though they had never really been a couple.
Once the sexual preliminaries were out of the way, it was his turn to really get off. They were out on his terrace overlooking the city, and Tracey had her head on his shoulder. Very romantic and cute, in a pathetic sort of way, like going on a date with Meg Ryan, or Daryl Hannah maybe.
“I want to tell you a little about what I’ve been up to,” he finally said. Until then, everything had been about her.
“I want to hear all about it, sweetie. Only I can’t leave the kid too late back at my hotel. The nanny threatens to quit.”
Now that he remembered, Tracey was kind of a selfish bitch most of the time.
“Does anybody know about the two of us tonight?” he asked.
“No. Duh. So what are you up to? Something big, of course. You’re due.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of a mystery thing. It’s big, all right. Really different though. Nothing anything like it before. I’m writing the story myself. The story of stories.”
“Wow, that’s great. You’re writing it yourself, huh?”
“Yeah. You know those murders in L.A.? Mary Smith?”
She knew a litt
le but not everything, since she’d been up in Vancouver for four weeks, so he quickly filled her in.
“You bought the rights? Wow! That’s great. And what, you want me to produce?”
He shook his head in disbelief.
“From who, Tracey? Who would I buy the rights from?”
“Oh, right. Well, so what’s the deal then?”