"Your mom and dad knew you were meeting me?" he asked her.
"Yes, but not to have sex!" Sally cried, laughing. "They're really terrific parents--I told you."
She gave him a brochure of The Nuts & Bolts Playhouse--there were pictures of Claudia and her husband, and the other daughters. The check was to be made payable to The Nuts & Bolts Foundation; it being a nonprofit meant that Jack's "donation" was tax-deductible, Sally told him.
For years, the children had asked their mother why she didn't ask Jack Burns for money for their theater enterprise. Jack was a movie star and Claudia knew him; surely he would give something.
"Why didn't you just ask me for a donation?" he asked Sally.
"Would you have given me this much?" Sally asked. (He'd written out a check to The Nuts & Bolts Foundation for $100,000. Compared to what the California Penal Code could cost him, it was a bargain.)
Jack drove the girl and Claudia's old suitcase back to Ocean Avenue. At least he'd been right about the suitcase; it had been a prop.
Sally's parents were night people. After they put the younger daughters to bed, Claudia and her husband went downstairs to have a drink in the bar; that's where they would be waiting for Sally to come back from the "screening." They'd agreed to let her go out and meet Jack Burns, solely for the purpose of asking Jack to make a donation to their efforts on behalf of Claudia's first and most enduring love--the theater. (This must have been what Sally meant by learning to be independent.) As for Claudia's old suitcase, Sally had stuffed it full of brochures of The Nuts & Bolts Playhouse--just in case she met other rich and famous movie stars at the alleged screening.
Sally and Jack discussed whether it was a good idea or not for him to come into the lobby of The Georgian with her. Meet her dad--say hello to Claudia, for old times' sake. Sally could announce the extraordinary generosity of Jack's donation. Gifts of $100,000 were rare; gifts of that size constituted "naming opportunities," Sally told him. A fellowship for a young student-actor, director, or playwright in Jack Burns's name; there was a capital campaign for a new six-hundred-seat theater, too. (Lots of naming opportunities, apparently.)
"Or you could choose to remain anonymous," Sally said.
Jack opted to remain anonymous. He told Sally that he thought he wouldn't go meet her dad and renew his acquaintance with her mom in the bar of The Georgian Hotel.
"That's probably best," Sally said. "Frankly, I could pull it off. I've rehearsed this for freakin' forever. But I honestly don't know if you're a good enough actor to just walk in there and pretend that you haven't fucked my brains out."
"I'm probably not that good," he admitted.
"Jack, I think you're very sweet," Claudia's daughter said, kissing his cheek. "Mom and Dad are going to write you--I know they will. A big thank-you letter, at the very least. For the rest of your life, you'll be on their mailing list; they'll probably ask you for money every year. I don't mean another hundred-thou or anything, but they'll ask you for something. I always thought they should ask you."
In the Nuts & Bolts Playhouse brochure, Claudia was wearing a tent-shaped dress and looked bigger than Kathy Bates climbing into that hot tub with Jack Nicholson in whatever that movie was. Her husband was a tall, bearded man who looked as if he were always cast as a betrayed king. The younger daughters were as big-boned and pretty as Sally.
When Jack pulled up to the curb at The Georgian Hotel on Ocean Avenue, Sally kissed him on his forehead. "You seem like a good guy, Jack--just a sad one," she said.
"Please give your mother my fondest regards," he told the fifteen-year-old.
"Thanks for the money, Jack. It means a lot--I'm not kidding."
"How does this constitute haunting me?" he asked her. "I mean, it was a sting. A pretty good one--I'll give you that, Sally. But how have you haunted me, exactly?"
"Oh, you'll see," Sally said. "This will haunt you, Jack--and I don't mean the money."
He went back to Entrada Drive--the scene of the crime, so to speak. It was a crime, not only according to the California Penal Code; it felt very much like a crime to Jack Burns. He'd had sex with a fifteen-year-old girl, and it had cost him only $100,000.
Jack stayed up late reading every word of the brochure Sally had left with him; he looked at all the pictures, over and over again. The Nuts & Bolts Playhouse was dedicated to that noble idea of theater as a public service. A neighbor who was an electrician had installed the new stage lights for free; a couple of local carpenters had built the sets for three Shakespearean productions, also at no charge. In a small southern Vermont town, virtually everyone had contributed something to the community playhouse.
The area schoolchildren performed their school plays in the theater; a women's book club staged dramatizations of scenes from their favorite novels. A New York City opera company rehearsed there for the month of January, before going on tour; some local children with good voices were taught to sing by professional opera singers. Poets gave readings; there were concerts, too. The summer-stock productions, while pandering to tourists' fondness for popular entertainment, included at least two "serious" plays every summer. Jack recognized a few of the guest performers in the summer casts--actors and actresses from New York.
There were two pictures of Claudia; in both she looked radiant and joyful, and fat. Her daughters were most photogenic--self-confident girls who'd been taught to perform. Certainly Claudia could be proud of Sally for possessing both poise and determination beyond her years. Did Claudia and her husband know that Sally was a model of self-assurance and independent thinking? Probably. Did her parents also know that Sally was as sexually active (on her family's behalf) as she was? Probably not.
Claudia had made the theater her family's business--perhaps more successfully than she knew. But no matter how hard Jack tried to understand the financing, he couldn't grasp how a so-called nonprofit foundation worked. (His math let him down again.) All Jack knew was that he would be writing out checks to The Nuts & Bolts Foundation for the rest of his life; regular donations of $100,000, or more, seemed a small price to pay for what he had done.
He wanted to call Dr. Garcia, but it was by now two or three in the morning and he knew what she would say. "Tell me in chronological order, Jack. I'm not a priest. I don't hear confessions." What she meant was that she didn't give absolution, not that there was any forgiveness for his having had sex with Claudia's daughter--not even if Jack could have convinced himself that Sally really was Claudia's ghost.
Jack was turning out the lights in the kitchen, before he finally went to bed, when he saw the rudimentary grocery list he had fasten
ed to the refrigerator with one of his mom's Japanese-tattoo magnets.
COFFEE BEANS
MILK