An Accidental Affair (23 page)

“I was so deep in character that Sasha took over. I was so overwhelmed, so deep in character that I
was
the character.”

“You’re blaming Stanislavski? Is that who we’re going to sue at the end of the day?”

“Regina didn’t exist anymore. I was there, but I was way in the back of my mind; just a whisper of me remained. The Regina part of me that remained was so small, like a drop of water in a glass of tea. I was lost in make-believe, so lost that fantasy and reality changed places. I was lost. Baby, I don’t know what happened. It was as if I had blacked out. I woke up from a dream surrounded by people, naked, next to Johnny Bergs.”

“With his come all over your body. It was dripping off your hands.”

“I freaked out. And he didn’t have the sock thing on his penis. His penis was supposed to be covered; you know that. But it wasn’t. I swear, baby, that was not me. That was Sasha.”

“Am I supposed to believe you or my lying eyes?”

“It was Sasha.”

“Blaming Sasha is an easy out.”

She cried for a while before she asked, “Will we be able to fix this?”

“Can you do a worldwide memory wipe?”

“You want a divorce?”

“What do you think?”

“Okay. Fine. I’ll call my attorney and we can start the goddamn divorce, you insensitive sonofabitch. I need you right now and this is how you’re going to fucking treat me.”

“Don’t turn this around. I saw the goddamn tape. Most men hear about their wives cheating on them, and a few might walk in, but not many get a high quality film directed by one of the best in the goddamn business to show them the details and the money shot.”

“Alan Smithee forced me to work that scene. I told you that; you know that.”

“Did he put Johnny Handsome’s dick inside you too? How did that happen?”

“No need dragging this out. No matter what I say to the press, no matter what I say to you, you’re all the same. You’re just like them. I’ll have you served as soon as I can.”

“Fuck you the way you fucked that loser Johnny, you slut.”

“No, fucking fuck you. I’m embarrassed. I’m scared. I’ve been with my therapist for days. I’m really messed up and I need you right now. Look, I fucking need you, James.”

“Maybe you should go cry on Johnny Handsome’s nut sacs.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll do that. Maybe I’ll drive to his Bel Air estate right now and suck his dick. The world wants me with him anyway. That would be my best move right now.”

“Always thinking about career first.”

“Just like you.”

“You’re probably already sucking his dick. Surprised you didn’t swallow on camera.”

She snapped, “Yeah, I’m sucking his fat dick and his hot come tastes good. His come is thick and rich and like boysenberry and tastes better than yours. I went to his trailer and sucked his dick every day we were on the set. I sucked his dick to wake him up in the morning and I sucked his dick to put him to sleep at night. I sucked his dick this morning and I’m imagining sucking his dick right now. Is that
what you want to hear? You want to know that his dick feels better than yours? You want to know that you never made me go into Sasha mode and he did?”

I closed my phone with a snap, tried of going at it like we were Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, and I moved my coat and pulled my gun out. My wife saw the gun. And I saw her anger. I saw her tears. I saw her madness. I saw that she was broken. She was insane now.

Regina Baptiste revved up the car, made it lurch like she was preparing to run me over.

And I was a man gone mad.

She made the RPMs kick into the red.

I walked toward the Bentley, each step deliberate, and my rage was clear.

My cellular rang again. Regina’s smiling face popped up on my caller ID.

I answered again.

She yelled, “I do love you, you know. If I didn’t, I would run you over for abandoning me when I need you the most. Alan Smithee, Johnny Bergs, everyone has done me wrong.”

“You are deranged. I haven’t heard from you in how many days? Not one message in two weeks. Who abandoned whom, Regina? Who fucking abandoned whom?”

She revved the engine again. She revved it as if to officially announce that she was inside of a very expensive weapon. I made sure she could see the loaded .38 at my side.

She said, “I love you. Remember that. I love you.”

Then the call ended as abruptly as our relationship had started.

Boy meets girl. Boy kills girl. Girl is immortalized like she’s the new Marilyn Monroe.

She put the Bentley in reverse and backed away in a hurry. She had been trained to drive in a movie where she played a cop, then trained again in a movie where she played the wife of criminal whom she
helped escape, so she handled the car extremely well, better than a professional.

Visions of Johnny Handsome flashed behind my eyes.

It was time to go after Regina Baptiste too.

But I looked up and saw dozens of faces looking out of their dirty windows.

I left what was almost a bloody disaster and stepped across refuse and broken glass, moved across the filth that defined my new world. I pushed the red button and the Maybach went back to sleep. Sweat rained from my face and down my neck and my hands remained in fists as I walked away. That Bentley had come into my world and now I had not a fucking word to say.

She had come on her hands. And I had had blood on mine. Johnny Handsome’s warm come had stained her flesh. Johnny Handsome’s warm blood had stained mine.

But in that moment, no one existed in my mind. I was a lone planet in a unique solar system, a planet that circled one shining star. Everyone had been removed. Everyone except Regina Baptiste. That was the power that love, that Regina Baptiste had over me now.

I could buy anything I needed but I couldn’t pay to make that moment vanish from my reality. I had been bombarded by a million thoughts, each moving at the speed of light, all colliding in my brain, and now it felt as if I was walking through an endless, shrieking blackness.

That was why I didn’t feel the heat and see the problem that was stalking me.

The elevator was out and there were over a dozen people crowding the stairs. It looked like rush hour at Ellis Island and the borders at Tijuana. That was why no one’s anger stood out. Not the frowning man in the sagging pants. Not the six women yakking violently at each other in Vietnamese. Not the irritated man in a pinstriped suit and presidential-looking tie. Not the arguing East Indian couple. As usual, I would rush by them all and make no eye contact, keep to my side of the crummy hallway as if it were my carpool lane on the 405.

But the man in pinstriped the suit did a double take and shouted, “James Thicke?”

Hearing my name crippled my livid pace. I slowed down and directed my scowl at him. He had a black Tumi messenger bag hanging over his shoulder. He had an equine face with a bulbous, hawk-like nose. The kind of guy who had to put on a thousand-dollar suit to get a dime-store hooker to notice him.

The suited man repeated my name. Then he snarled, doubled his fists, and exploded. He ran at me with violence, the same fast and furious way that I had gone after Johnny Handsome.

He swung fast, threw an impatient roundhouse punch that was meant to separate my head from my neck. My world was set on fire, red with pain. The gun and jacket that I held, both fell and tumbled to the dull brown carpet in the hallway. Another blow came my way. The blow hit my forearm and the impact sent pain up my arm, from
my hand to my shoulder. He threw a third blow before the second one had finished doing its damage. I bobbed and felt his knuckles swish past my nose. He had thrown all of his weight into that blow. It was a hellified haymaker that took him off balance. Unrelenting, I did my best to knock him galley-west. My blow missed the side of his head. He came at me like he’d been waiting for this moment all of his life. He swung another roundhouse punch. This time I countered. My blow exploded into his chest. Pain registered in his eyes. He staggered. I charged at him, aimed for his throat, but my next blow caught the side of his face. That knocked him away from me.

My world on fire, pain rising like a flood, I snapped, “Who the fuck are you?”

He barked, “You sonofabitch. You didn’t think that you could ambush a Bergs brother and just walk away without getting your clock cleaned, did you? You sneak attack one of us and you attack all of us. I’m here to set the record straight, motherfucker. I’m here to beat your motherfucking ass then put your head on a stick and take it back to my brother.”

Apartment doors opened on the fight. Neighbors spied or stepped out into the hallway.

Now we were both blocked in and the slender hallway had become our narrow ring.

It was a violent, noisy fight that moved from wall to wall and up and down the hallway, the curses flying back and forth like we were the background rappers in a Lil Wayne cut. The bastard caught me with a couple of quick lefts that put bee stings across my face. He grinned like he was going to torture me until he decided to beat my ass into the dilapidated carpet. But I went full throttle, snapped off a left-right-left-right-double-left-double right to his head, most missing, but at least four finding parts of his face and at least two catching the bridge of his nose.

Tasting his own blood enraged him.

He screamed and came at me swinging, caught me with a stiff left.

Then I was stunned, frightened, enraged, and once again humiliated.

He said, “I’m going to fuck you up even better than Johnny fucked your pretty little wife.”

I exploded and went after him with a Sugar Ray flurry and Mike Tyson blows.

He ducked and stumbled, but I hit that bastard until a blow landed dead square on his jaw. His lights didn’t go out, but the rheostat inside his head eased the bright lights down to dim.

He was down for at least an eight count. I needed him down for ten.

Barely able to breathe, ribs aching, I staggered, rubbed my throbbing hands, and picked up my jacket. I didn’t have brass knuckles. What I was going after was my loaded gun. He looked up, surprised to see my .38, the same way a kid would be surprised to see a magician pull a pissed-off rattlesnake out of a hat. He’d never seen the gun on the floor as we fought. My coat had fallen with the gun, had left the .38 covered except for the edge of the short barrel.

I said, “Say it again. What you said about your brother and my wife, say it again.”

His shirt was ripped, damn near pulled off his body. His face was red, eyes swollen.

My jeans were ripped. My face ached. But nothing ached more than my hands.

“Johnny fucked that slut and he fucked her good.”

I raised the gun and hit him a half dozen times, would’ve kept beating his ass but I was too spent. His face was a brand new ugly, his jaw broken, and blood ran from his head like a river in search of an ocean. Then somebody came up behind me and pulled me off that ugly sonofabitch. He pulled me and I took a wild swing and missed him by the width of the face of a watch, then was ready to aim the gun at him and pull the trigger.

It was another man in a dark suit. Six-foot-two. Driver.

Hands extended in front of his body, he said, “Thicke. Calm down, man. Don’t do it.”

Driver looked at me, his eyes wide, his concern deep, but after what he saw, he stepped out of the way. Sweat ran from my skin like water. I pulled back the hammer on the gun.

Driver said, “You don’t want to do that, Thicke. Trust me. You don’t want to kill a man. You do, and you’ll have to live with that shit the rest of your motherfucking life.”

Driver and I held eye contact. His professional words had changed from being as smooth as butter to as rugged as the streets. And I saw part of him that I knew nothing about.

Bizarro Bergs extended his arms, shook his head vehemently, palms out, and begged.

I said, “I’ll count to ten. But I’m going to start shooting at three. One…”

He saw madness, saw the look of a raging bull, the insanity of
Taxi Driver
, and crawled away from me as fast as he could, scampered like a crab, grabbed a door knob and pulled himself to his feet, then took off running and limping and stumbling, never looking back.

Chest heaving for air, I turned around and scowled beyond Driver at my multiethnic neighbors. One of them looked Scandinavian, a man with long blond hair with hints of gray, a face with a thin, scruffy beard that actually reminded me of Trond Espen Seim, the actor who played Varg Veum in the movies. He had his iPhone up high, was recording the melee with a wide grin on his face. He looked tough. Hard-boiled. As if he was a better fighter.

Driver saw that smart-ass smug sonofabitch and was on him in less than a second. The man had some size, looked rough around the edges, a man who lived for a barroom fight. But Driver was a man who protected his clients. He grabbed the man by his throat and ripped the cellular phone from the man’s hand. Driver tossed me the phone, then drew back like he was about to knock that man’s head
through the wall. But he didn’t. When Driver let the man go, he staggered like he had been shot and collapsed to the carpet. Driver and I stared at each other, both surprised at how fast that second fight on the card had ended.

I told Driver, “Give the man his phone back.”

“I don’t think so. You just bought this phone.”

“Did I?”

“Yeah. This kind man sold it to you.”

“I didn’t hear him sell it to me.”

“It was a silent auction and you won.”

“Yeah. You’re right. He did sell it to me. Begrudgingly, but a deal is a deal.”

I took out my wallet and threw four hundred-dollar bills at the man’s feet.

Driver said, “It’s an iPhone. Give him one more for good measure.”

“That’s all my cash.”

Driver took five twenties out of his wallet and threw those into the pile.

He said, “I’ll expense you.”

Then I looked at the terrified man. I looked into his eyes, a gun in my hand, sweat on my brow, blood on my clothing. “Don’t make me come visit you, neighbor. Don’t make me. Just so you’ll know, this isn’t a toy in my hand. I practice at the range twice a week. Center mass nine times out of ten. I’ve never shot a man, but I’ve been itching to find out what that is like. I’d do it just to say that I did it. Don’t make today that day, neighbor. Don’t make today that day.”