An Accidental Affair (41 page)

All of this had happened because of Misty fucking Mouse.

Because of a fight that the Bergs clan had had inside of Club Mapona.

Driver led us through the crowd. Six-foot-two and able to move them all out of his way. With her assistant at her left side, Regina Baptiste kept her head held up high. If they had hated her in her absence, in her self-imposed hiatus, they sure as hell loved her now.

She asked, “What should I do?”

“Just don’t be remorseful. No matter what has happened, don’t be apologetic. The world hates weak people. Even weak people despised weaker people. Be gentle, but remain unapologetic. Be Donald Trump. Be George Bush. Even when you’re wrong, you’re right.”

She had no publicist, so I assumed the job for the day. I protected her, but I also did what was best for her. There was a young man in the crowd wearing headgear that had a small camera attached. He was a blogger and he was streaming this moment live on the Internet. We were being broadcast in real time. I motioned at him, then told the police to let him through. The guy was surprised and amazed. He was side by side with Regina Baptiste, capturing the moment and broadcasting it live for the entire world to see. This was his fifteen minutes of fame.

In Hollywood, fans were putting flowers on Johnny Handsome’s star.

In the valley, two kids were crying because their father had drowned.

A young Hungarian woman sat in a holding cell, crying, with no one to bail her out.

As the enthusiastic crowd pushed and squeezed her, Patrice watched me.

And so did her husband. He was a tall man, pale skin, red hair, and freckles.

Mr. Holder watched Regina Baptiste. He stared at my wife with an unhidden envy.

And so did Vera-Anne as she held one of her children on her hip, the other by the hand.

I’d bet that Hazel Tamana saw this too, was watching this on the news or on the web.

I had watched Regina Baptiste, from actress, effloresce into a shining star.

I’d seen her fall. And now she was rising again.

Regina Baptiste shook hands. She hugged people. She touched dozens. People cried. A few fainted. She smiled for photos. She laughed and kissed people on their cheeks. And when asked about Johnny Bergs, she expressed the proper amount of admiration blended with sorrow. They wanted her to sing. They begged her to sing that song by Janis Ian.

Driver helped put her on top of a car and the way everyone cheered, you would think that she could walk on water and raise the dead.

But the girl from Montana acted, sang, and danced. In this world, in this country that was a trifecta. For many, for thousands, for millions, that was all that it took to become a god.

And wearing a very short black dress that had long sleeves and cleavage, add to that a belt that made her figure stand out, and a pair of insanely incredible turquoise Louboutin heels helped. She was right. They wanted to see her dressed up like a movie star, not as one of them.

Her singing and greeting her fans lasted twenty minutes. The blogger captured it all. A large section of the world had seen the cultural festival, had front-row seats. They had seen how everyone was on the same page, how everyone was ecstatic, how everyone was getting along. I hadn’t seen that spirit in this complex since I had arrived.

Police surrounded me, but not one said a word to me. Not one arrested me for murder.

Hours ago I was the star of the show, drowning one man, then killing the Bergs in a roadside shootout, and now I was an extra in this movie, a movie that starred Regina Baptiste; at most my part was an Under-Five. When I was with her, it was always about her. Once again, I was the bit player, atmosphere. Hundreds of cell phones were pointed our way, taking photos and recording. Something touched me deep inside. Part of me wanted to cry. But I smiled.

I’d remember this day to the other side of my death.

Regina said a few words, and when she spoke, whatever she said became the gospel according to Baptiste. She said that a lot of lies had been told about her, said that the small-minded and greedy had attacked her over the last few weeks, and that each lie had hurt her family and for that, because she was all about honesty and the truth, every magazine that had printed a lie would be sued. They applauded her. They lauded her attack on yellow journalism.

When my wife was done, Driver and the police helped Regina down from the top of a vehicle and she came to me. She hugged me, her body once again shaking from being nervous, wiped away tears, then held on to my hand, showed them that I was her leading man.

Within a day, she would have 7,586,777 views, 23,374 likes and 477 dislikes on this moment. Not bad. Not bad at all for the daughter of a Conky Joe from Spanish Wells.

She raised her voice and said, “I thought everyone hated me.”

“Everyone loves you. And anyone who doesn’t adore you, anyone who screams out anything differently, will hear an echo in that place where their brains should be.”

We walked hand in hand, swaggering on the promise of life, cameras flashing, the eyes of the curious reflecting in our sunglasses, approval, envy, and disdain brightening and heating our faces, the hottest scandal in Hollywood at the moment, a scandal that had to be
embraced and confronted head on or the flames of judgment would kill us, and the fire was our fire, the fire was ours to claim, and we’d ride the waves of fame and infamy until the next scandal arrived.

That was when I thought about the video of Bobby Holland being drowned.

When Regina had found Bobby Holland’s watch in my pocket, she had pulled me off task. The video hadn’t been deleted. I’d been distracted by confessing what I had done, her cooking, Patrice showing up in search of a good time, and trying to close this emotional and dangerous chasm that had grown between Regina Baptiste and me. Then the paparazzi had appeared and caused an avalanche of her fans to end up outside my window. I’d left the phone behind. The crew was packing and I had left the damn phone behind. I had slipped and left the one thing that could damn me to prison for the rest of my days. The expression on my face didn’t hide that panic. I had failed to delete the video of Bobby Holland dying by my hand. The shootout with the Bergs was on that phone. And so was the coke session with Bergs, Holland, and Baptiste.

Once I had put Regina inside the car, her assistant joined her on the rear passenger side. I was at the rear driver’s side. Regina was on her cellular. Everyone was calling her. Her old agent. Her old publicist. The director for
The Bodyguard
. The director of
A Star is Born.

Alice Ayres had been in the apartment. Something told me that she hadn’t gone into the bathroom and stolen her iPhone. I hadn’t seen her go inside the bathroom. I had to be sure. As we sat, I sent her a text message and asked her if she had retrieved her cellular.

Without looking at me, she sent a text and told me she hadn’t.

I asked Regina if she had seen an iPhone in the bathroom.

She told me that she hadn’t noticed. She had been distracted as well.

I told Driver to wait. But he couldn’t. The police directed us forward.

Enough was enough and the citizens of Downey wanted their city back.

Not everyone appreciated or was thrilled by the madness.

We had to escape while the police had the roadway open from the apartment to the entrance of the 605 South. The phone was left behind. I called the number of the movers, and they put me in contact with the workers. The packing crew said that they hadn’t seen a cellular in the bathroom. They looked all over. No phone. Phones didn’t vanish. Someone had it.

There were moments when a man saw his life very clearly. Clarity wasn’t always a good thing. Back at The Apartments I’d walked to the third floor to return Misty Mouse’s odious and poorly written manuscript,
Cruelty of Men Toward Women
. When I made it to that level, six young men were entering her apartment. Looked like it was bukkake time. Since the venal woman was occupied, I left her novel propped against her front door and headed down one level.

Over one hundred Post-it notes had been stuck on the apartment door at E-213, enough to fill the wooden door from top to bottom, enough to imply desperation. I peeled them all off. When I opened the door, part of me had wanted the space to be as it was, but the apartment was barren, empty, devoid of life. There were indentations in the carpet where the furniture had been. Across the hallway, the neighbors were playing Steely Dan. “Do It Again.” That song remained thunderous after I closed the door and searched from room to room. In the kitchen, I looked inside the cabinets. In the bedroom, I searched the closets. I searched the cabinet under the sink in the bathroom. Nothing had been left behind. The videophone wasn’t here.

I’d already unpacked everything in Los Feliz. It wasn’t there either.

Above me, the sounds from Misty Mouse’s working on her cheap bed never waned.

Inside the bathroom, jaw clenched, I stood and looked at the
covering for the toilet’s cistern. First I stared at the bathroom sink, then at the counter. I noticed it then. I ran two fingers across the top of the counter and looked at my fingers. Anger rose. There was an abrupt knock at the door. I wiped my hand on my pants and went to the door. It was Mr. Chetwyn Holder.

I invited him inside. He had on jeans and a polo shirt. He glanced at the red writing on my black T-Shirt.
SUPPORT FINE ARTS. SHOOT A RAPPER.
He looked around and saw that the place was empty, hollow, nothing to absorb sound, except for the carpet.

His voice had a slight echo when he said, “The other day…”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He nodded. “That was something else. What your wife did, all the people, that was something else. She made a lot of people happy. She’s a talented woman. No matter what she did, the world loves her. I guess that’s how it is when you can sing and dance.”

I nodded then asked, “How did the reunion with your daughter go?”

“I thought she wanted to talk to me about the wedding. She did. But she had two decades of anger. Wanted to know why I never sent more money. Wanted to know if I ever loved her mom. Wanted to know why I left. I told her that what she was asking was complicated to explain. Love isn’t a straight line. And it takes more than love to make a marriage work.”

“It does. It really does.”

“Everybody who is divorced used to be people in love, so love isn’t the glue.”

“Sounds like it was rough.”

“I told her that she was my daughter and I loved her. Told her I wanted to walk with her at her wedding. I wanted to help her pay for the wedding, help make her day be the type of day that she wanted it to be, and walk with her. She told me that whenever she married, she’d walk alone. She said that all of her life she’d walked without me.
She said that getting in contact with me was a fucking mistake. She cursed me just like that. Then she walked away.”

“Did you go after her?”

“She’s pregnant.”

“Well, that could explain a lot, hormone wise.”

“I didn’t go after her, but when I left, she was still outside in the parking lot.”

“You saw her.”

“I went over to her and tried to calm her down. I held her in my arms and told her that I could be the best granddad in the world. Said that we could grow and get better at this father-daughter thing together. She asked me if a lousy dad equaled a wonderful grandfather. She pulled away, became real bitter and snarky. She is definitely her mother’s daughter.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“We cried for a while. I was a stranger to her. A stranger who used to sleep with her mother, nothing more. So I sat in her car and told her the truth. I didn’t want to speak bad about her mother, but I told her the ugly truth. The drinking. The fighting. The other men. I guess I became as angry as she was. I thought that she would be mad or angered, but she cried and said that she already knew those things. She was angry because I had left her and she’d had to grow up with her mother. Her life had been hell. Then she told me that the wedding was off.”

“You mean postponed?”

“It was off. She said that he left her. They’re not getting married. I didn’t ask her why. But if she was as rough with him as she was with me, she probably ran him away. She thinks that the man that she was going to marry left her the same way I had left her mom. She was afraid of being her mother. She has so much anger. And I’m afraid that she already is. They had put down money on this and that. Nonrefundable money, and he called and canceled it all.”

I didn’t say anything after that revelation.

He said, “So now she has nowhere to live. She’s moving in with me.”

“Okay.”

“This one is my daughter. I won’t feel like a fool if I take care of her from now until she can do better. The money that I had saved for her wedding, I’ll use it to take care of her. I have close to forty thousand. Had almost forty-six, but Vera-Anne and her kids ate up some of it. Clothes for the kids. Pampers. Wipes. Milk. Vaseline. Powder. Soap. Lotion. Baby cups and spoons. I miss Vera-Anne, but she was a freeloader. I wanted to help her out, but I don’t like feeling like I’ve been used. She was a freeloader. She used me for food and shelter. She won’t get a job until she has to, and now she has to. Nothing in this world is free. When you’re grown, you have to pull your own weight. She’s not handicapped. She has to pull her own weight.”

“I’ll let you be the judge on that. What you’re having to decide, it sounds tough.”

“Love is always tough. Going against your heart is tougher.”

“Sure is. It hasn’t ever been easy.”

He said, “Not in this jungle. Down here every day is a different battle.”

“Not in my jungle either. It’s just as rough. Love does us no special favors.”

“I’ll work and help my daughter get on her feet. She’s my blood. She came from me.”

“Redemption.”

“Yeah. Redemption. I have twenty years of her rage and my guilt to work though.”

“How do you think living with her is going to be?”

“Hell. It’s going to be Hell. But it’s a Hell that I created.”