Lucky Stars (21 page)

t
wenty-seven

I
had a pain in my gut as I always did when I fought with my mother. I hated it when she was mad at me, and the last thing I intended to do was to push her away, right into Victor’s arms. I suppose I should have waited until I had more conclusive information about him, but I was desperate to protect her. Too desperate. A case of premature explanation, that’s what I had.

I spent the night at Jack’s, who did not have a case of premature anything. We made love like two people who were truly committed to each other, and all my conflicts and fears melted away when he was holding me. I woke up the next morning feeling optimistic; that somehow I would wrest my mother from Victor’s emotional grasp and make up with her.

Meanwhile, I had a little project I hoped would distract me, and I planned to tackle it the minute Jack left for the studio. Kyle, his assistant, had called me the previous week to say that the crew of
Good Morning, Hollywood
was throwing a surprise party the following month to commemorate Jack’s fifth anniversary as host.

“We’re going to make it a rowdy, warts-and-all roast of your boyfriend,” Kyle had said with a mischievous laugh. “We’re crazy about the guy, you know that, but we can’t wait to put
him
in the hot seat for a change.”

“Great idea,” I’d said. “How can I help?”

“Glad you asked. We want to dig up old videos, old clippings, anything he did when he was first starting out in the business, and use them as part of a
This Is Your Life-
type
evening. Basically, we want to embarrass the hell out of Mr. Television Star by putting him back in touch with his humble beginnings as a print reviewer.”

“I love it. And he’ll love it, too, Kyle.”

“He’d better or I’m out of a job. Anyhow, knowing how he’s such a saver—does he keep his grocery lists, too?—I’m betting he’s got all those old clips and videos at his place. And since you have access to them, I was wondering if you could hunt them down for me on the sly.”

“Sure. You want to go all the way back to the articles he wrote for
Variety
and
The Hollywood Reporter
?”

“Absolutely. We’ve got to remind him that he used to be a lowly beat reporter for the trades before becoming a pompous film critic.”

I’d promised Kyle I’d look for Jack’s professional memorabilia the first chance I got.

Well, today’s the day, I thought when I was alone in his house the morning after the blowup with Mom. Maybe I’ll be more successful at digging around in his past than I was at digging around in Victor’s.

I drank some coffee, then fought my way through Jack’s clutter en route to his office, smiling to myself as I pictured his reaction to being roasted by his pals. Even though he took movies seriously, he didn’t take himself seriously, not deep down, and so I expected him to be flattered by the party and good-natured about having his early work held up to public scrutiny.

Since Kyle had specifically asked me to pull all the old stuff, I started at the beginning of Jack’s career and searched his filing cabinets for folders with clippings from both
Variety
and
The Hollywood Reporter.
I chuckled when I came upon the
Variety
file, because it was out of order alphabetically and should have been at the back of the cabinet instead of up front.

That’s my pack rat, I thought as I began sifting through
the
bulging folder. I don’t know how he ever finds anything around here.

I skimmed the articles, my heart swelling with pride whenever I read the “Jack Rawlins” byline. I tried to imagine how he must have felt all those years ago, covering stories about distribution companies and weekend grosses and studio executives who were leaving one company for another—all aspects of the business about which he couldn’t have cared less.
I
knew he must have perceived the job as a way to gain exposure for himself within the industry, as a stepping-stone toward reviewing movies someday, as an entry into the magical world he’d worshiped since childhood.

I continued to read through the clippings, weighing which ones I’d give to Kyle for the surprise party, when the headline of one of Jack’s articles caught my attention—and held it.

I stared at the headline, just fixed my eyes on it for
several seconds, before the meaning of it, the reality of it, the enormity of it sunk in.

It read: “Theatre Prexy Chellus Plays Happy Tune Amid Fraud Charges.”

I clutched the clipping in my hand and felt my mouth go dry. What the hell is
this?
I wondered as I tried to make sense of what I was looking at, tried to keep a clear head even though a thousand thoughts were bumping up against each other. Part of me went immediately into denial, as I formulated simple, innocent explanations for the piece, theories that would allow my faith in Jack to remain intact. The other part of me was wild with suspicion and mistr
ust and the certainty that what
ever was in the article would absolutely wreck us, and it was that part that propelled me over to Jack’s desk chair.

I sat down and began to read avidly, to pore over every word of the piece. According to Jack, Victor owned a chain of movie theaters, mostly in small-to-midsize markets, that operated under the name Victory Theatres. Not only had Vic been accused of bilking the studios out of their fair share of his profits, but he’d been rumored to be pirating prints of first-run movies, selling them overseas instead of shipping them back to their distributor. What’s more, the backers of his renovation project—the upgrading of his older theaters to mode
rn
multiplexes—were hounding him for the money they claimed, he owed them.

“In an exclusive interview with
Variety,”
the article stated, “Chellus declared that he is innocent of all charges and said he is just one of many theater owners trying to survive in an increasingly competitive marketplace. ‘This is a tough business,’ he told
Variety.
‘People like to kick you when you’re down. But I can assure the
entire entertainment community that I’ve done nothing wrong.’ Chellus pointed out that his theaters provide hundreds of jobs around the country—from Charlotte and Akron to Nashville and Kansas City—and that he is a longtime contributor to charitable organizations. ‘I take my
responsibilities
as an American businessman seriously,’ he said. ‘I would never even consider cheating another company, let alone break the sacred covenant between theater owner and distributor.’ ”

I let the article fall to the floor as I digested what I had just read. I felt sick, shaky, out of control, but forced myself to process what I’d learned.

For one thing, the fact that Victor had been accused of being such a crook years ago—in an actual magazine article, no
t
simply in a conversation between Rosa and Carlos—was more proof that my instincts about him were correct and that my mother was indeed at risk of being conned by the man she loved.

But it was the fact that Jack had been privy to all this and not told me—Jack, the man
I
loved, the man who was supposed to love me, the man I trusted—that made me doubt my instincts. For months he denied knowing anything about Victor Chellus, despite my concerns over my mother’s safety. And now it turned out that he knew plenty about Victor, including that he was implicated in not one but
three
cases of fraud. Moreover, it was Jack himself who conducted the interview for the magazine, Jack who spoke directly to Victor about the accusations, Jack who was at the center of
Variety
's coverage of the whole Victory Theatre mess. And yet he never said a word to me. Not when I told him Mom was dating Victor. Not when I told him she was serious about him. Not when I told him I suspected him. of being a no-good scumball who would end up hurting her. Was it possible
that he didn’t remember that he’d interviewed Victor? Of course not. But then why had he acted as if it didn’t happen? And was his eagerness to keep it a secret the reason why he always begged off whenever I invited him to join Mom and Victor and me for dinner?

“Maybe he has a good excuse,” said Maura after I called her on the set of her show.

“Like what? He has amnesia? That may work on
Days of Our Lives
but it doesn’t cut it on
Days of My Life
.”

“Are you going to confront him?”

“I think that goes without saying.”

I
rehearsed the scene on and off during the day. I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, didn’t want to be too shrill or judgmental when Jack came home from work and I hit him with my little bombshell. On the other hand, I was terribly upset. I thought I’d finally found my soul mate, finally found a man who would be honest with me, and now it seemed I was mistaken.

“Hey, pretty lady,” he said when he walked in the door that night and tossed his jacket onto the bench in the foyer. “What a wicked day I had. We had technical problems that delayed the taping and threw everybody’s schedule off.”

I didn’t respond. His technical problems weren’t a priority.

“How was your day?” he asked as he headed for the kitchen to sort through the stack of mail on the counter, next to which I had strategically placed the
Variety
clipping.

“My day?” I said, trailing behind him. “It wasn’t too hot, either. I’m hoping you’ll be able to make it better.”

“Better?” He didn’t look up from the mail. “How?”

“By being straight with me about a subject we’ve tried to discuss before.”

He groaned. “This isn’t about Victor, is it?”

“It is.”

“But we agreed that you weren’t going to ‘investigate’ him or meddle in your mother’s relationship with him.”

“We
didn’t agree to any such thing.
You
didn’t want me to meddle. Why was that, Jack? Refresh my memory.”

He finally glanced up at me. “Okay, Stacey. What’s the matter? I’m totally in the dark here.”

“Then let me turn on the light for you. If you check the counter, to the right of your mail, you’ll see exactly what the matter is.”

He pushed aside all the letters and magazines and junk flyers and picked up the
Variety
clip. After reading the headline and, presumably, recalling that he did, in fact, interview Victor and write the article, he flushed slightly but otherwise maintained his composure. A second or two passed before he said, “Where’d you get this?”

I didn’t want to ruin his surprise party, really I didn’t, but I couldn’t very well withhold the truth from him, particularly since my principal beef was that he had withheld the truth from me. I told him about Kyle’s phone call and how he’d asked me to find the old clippings and that I hadn’t
merely been poking around in hi
s files in my spare time.

“I’d like an explanation, Jack. Why didn’t you ever tell me you had information about Victor?”

He was silent briefly—a rarity for him. “It’s complicated,” he said at last.

“Complicated, huh? Well, how about laying the explanation on me and we’ll see if I’m capable of understanding it.”

“Please don’t be sarcastic, Stacey. This is hard for me.
”

“Hard for you? What about me? I’m the one with the mother who’s in love with the lowlife you wrote about. I’m the one with the boyfriend who keeps secrets.”

He nodded, took a breath. “I didn’t tell you what I knew about Victor because”—he paused, took another breath—“because it would have meant kissing my professional reputation good-bye.”

“Excuse me?” I was incredulous. “You lied to me in order to protect your reputation? What on earth does your television career have to do with admitting that you once wrote an article about Victor?”

“As I said, it’s complicated. Actually, I’d prefer not to go into it.”

“Not to go into it? You’d rather we leave it that you were so afraid of tarnishing your precious reputation that you would jeopardize my mother’s well-being by letting her fall for a man accused of cheating his business partners?”

“He
was
accused of engaging in questionable business practices, but I didn’t consider him a danger to Helen and I still don’t. If I did, I would have told you about the article.”

“Okay, I get it now. You and Victor became buddies after you padded the article with that crap about his sacred covenant and his charitable contributions. That’s what happened, right? You figured that your friendship with a crook, years ago though it was, could sink your career if people found out about it?”

“There was no friendship, believe me.”

“Believe you? Why should I? Not unless you tell me the whole story, Jack.”

“I can’t. I won’t allow everything I’ve worked so hard for to be destroyed.”

“But you will allow everything
we’ve
worked so hard for to be destroyed?”

He didn’t answer.

“I’m the woman you say you love, Jack. What could be so awful that you can’t tell
me
about it?”