Miracle (49 page)

The long day of physical labor caught up with him, and before he realized it he was dozing with his chin still braced on one hand. The loud blare of music at the program’s end woke him up. He stood wearily, a little disgruntled at his fatigue. Even though his body had never
been more fit, it reminded him some days that he was one year away from forty.

He went to the noisy television, squinting at the program’s credits, which were scrolling down the screen. He was
not
becoming farsighted, he assured himself, idly testing his vision on the names and production titles. Perhaps a
little
farsighted, he admitted.

Dismayed at the thought, he reached for the set’s off button. His hand stopped in midair as a list of the show’s writers appeared on the screen. He grabbed the set and held it up, reading and rereading the name he could definitely see—but had trouble believing.

He had found her, right at the end of his fingertips.

Amy didn’t sleep much during the night. Exhilarated by Freddie’s offer and worried about how Elliot would take the news, she left her apartment early and made the long rush-hour drive to Burbank in record time—one hour.
Thornton After Hours
was based in a five-story stucco building surrounded by palm trees. The writers shared a communal office on the top floor, in a ten-room suite next to the studio where the show was taped when it wasn’t being shot on location.

“Is Elliot in yet?” she asked the show’s receptionist.

She looked startled. “Oh, no. We thought he was with you last night. He disappeared right after we taped. We thought that he’d followed you, uhmmm, uh, that you two had a reconciliation, maybe.”

Amy shifted uneasily. “No. Have you checked his office?”

“Are you kidding? I never go in there without a SWAT team.”

Amy hurried down the hall to a door festooned with the covers of comic books. Pictures of Elliot’s handsome, boyish face were taped over the heads of all the superheroes. Photos of Carson, Letterman, and Arsenio Hall also decorated the door. Each rival talk-show host wore a goatee, moustache, and devil horns. She knocked, lis-
Inside, among the kind of garish kitsch an Andy Warhol fan might have coveted, a futon lay on the floor.

Elliott Thornton, comic genius, was sprawled on the futon wearing nothing but beard stubble. He was snoring loudly.

An empty bourbon bottle lay beside him, along with a mirror strewn with white dust, a box of straws, and a bottle of Valium. Amy ran to him and knelt down. After reassuring herself that he was no more stoned than usual, she sat back wearily and gazed at him with despair.

“You self-destructive jerk,” she whispered, but took his hand. He was starting to go soft around the stomach, his all-American nose was swollen, premature gray showed among the wavy brown hair at his temples, and his once-unstoppable libido looked permanently flaccid. She wondered if it were even capable of chasing model-actresses anymore.

But she had spent years looking after him, needing to be needed by him, and old habits died hard. When he woke up she brought him a cup of coffee and sat on the futon while he drank it. He groaned. “I’m not doing so well by myself at night, baby.”

“You didn’t do much better when we were together.”

“Comeon baby, how long are you going to turn the screws?”

“Like I always say, try some clean living. Then we’ll talk.”

“Oh, boy, more lectures.” He stroked his limp penis and sighed with relief when it began to move. “Speak into the microphone.”

“No, thanks, but I
do
have something to tell you.”

“Yeah, it’s about time you admitted the sonovabitch’s name.”

She exhaled wearily. “I wish this
were
about a man. You’d be less jealous.”

He squinted at her and stopped stroking himself. “Huh?”

She told him about Freddie and his cable special.

Elliot’s eyes narrowed to slits. His hand curled on his belly with ominous tension as she finished. “I’ve been Mr. Nice Guy, waiting for you to come back to me, giving you
a job you didn’t deserve just so you’d stick around! No more handouts, baby!”

“Handouts?” She tried to keep her voice light. One furious person in the room was enough. “I’ve been your comedy slave for years. I
earned
my way, and I’ll put my yuks-per-joke ratio up against any writer’s in the business. Good Lord, this is the first year your writing staff has been nominated for an Emmy. I contributed to that nomination, Elliot. There’s no doubt about it.”

“Egomaniac!”

“Calm down, Mr. Nice Guy. I don’t want to quit writing for you because I got this break. I’ve still got a long way to go before I hit the big time—”

“Hit the big time!” He bolted upright and leaned toward her with a taunting and incredulous expression on his face. “Where do you get your fortune cookies, baby? They’ve been lying!”

“I know it’s still a daydream, but I’m gonna try to be a name.”

“Not while you’re working for me, you’re not!” He grabbed his coffee cup and threw it across the room. It splattered into a shelf filled with his awards. “You want to keep your old man in an expensive nursing home? Fine! But go pay for it some other way! You’re history! Hit the street!”

She rose and went to the door, opened it, held onto it tightly. She was so disgusted that she almost didn’t care that he’d fired her. Almost. This was it. Sink or swim. “Good-bye,” she said softly.

“You’ll be back! You’ll never make it! You’re nothing but a daydreamer. What is this, a midlife crisis? Hell, you’re not even thirty!” He beat the futon with his fists. “You’re a follower, not a leader! They’ll eat you alive! You haven’t got what it takes to compete in the big leagues!”

“Wipe your nose. It’s bleeding.” She would always take care of him. But she shut the door hard on her way out.

She gathered her things in the office. The guys gathered around her desk looking morose at being left without her to run interference between them and Elliot. When one of the communal Mickey Mouse phones rang somebody slouched over reluctantly and answered it.

“Security guard says somebody’s in the lobby to see you,” he told Amy, tossing the mouse ears back on the receiver.

“Who?”

“You expect me to be efficient when I’m this depressed? I forgot to ask.”

“Oh, nevermind, I know who it is. It’s that guy we were reading about in that grocery-store tabloid the other day. The one who makes jewelry from pigeon skulls. I called him … told him to drop by this morning and see us. I thought we might build a piece around him.” Struggling not to cry, she smoothed invisible wrinkles from the soft material of her dress. She had worn the flowing turquoise outfit with its neat little collar and double row of tiny buttons down the front because it had been one of Elliot’s favorites … and because she’d read somewhere that turquoise was a soothing color.

Defeated, she tossed a turquoise-leather purse into the cardboard box that held her other possessions. “On my way out I’ll send the bird man up to see you guys.”

They groaned and looked more pitiful.

“A trooper to the end!”

“A trooper, you say? She’s leaving us with Custer at the battle of the Little Big Horn. And Custer is nuts.”

“Run, Amy. Save your own scalp.”

She cried a little as she hugged each of them. Then she saluted. “It was nice knowing you while you still had hair.”

“We’ll go downstairs with you. See you off into the wicked world.”

“No, I’m looking forward to blubbering in the elevator. Thanks, though.”

Once she was hidden inside the elevator she clutched her box with one arm, allowed herself one loud wail, then wiped her eyes hurriedly. She didn’t want to look deranged in front of the bird-skull man, who might be a sensitive
artistic type.
He Makes Masterpieces From Bird Brains
, the tabloid headline had proclaimed with respect, if not anatomical accuracy.

The lobby downstairs was empty except for Jackson, the aging black security guard.

“Where’s the guy you called about?”

Jackson pointed across the lobby to a sunny anteroom. “Stepped in there. Seemed kind of restless.”

“It’s a high-pressure job, looking for dead pigeons with artistic heads. Here, keep my going-away box while I talk to the guy.”

She crossed the lobby, straightening her hair and brushing her fingertips over her face. Amy reached the anteroom’s entrance and halted, startled. He stood with his back to her, silhouetted by the light of an arching, Spanish-style window. She hadn’t seen a photo of the bird man. She had expected someone who looked as if he had nothing better to do than shellac pigeon skulls. This man looked like an extremely well built statue come to life. So maybe it was how he attracted the pigeons.

He was very still, his hands clasped behind him, his attention focused on some outside scene or inner distraction. Amy rebuked herself for standing there unannounced and ogling him, but she couldn’t help it. An odd feeling of recognition bewildered her.

His solitude. His stillness and unmistakable elegance. His hair, the luxurious color of dark chocolate. His aura of wealth. Even from the back his suit appeared exquisitely cut. It was black, with a fine gray pinstripe. He was
not
a California native, not in that beautiful but solemn outfit.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la mème chose
. The graceful window framed him in its old-world ambience.

When she finally stepped forward she was so clumsy that she almost stumbled. She stopped again and took a deep breath. A dreamlike quality came over her, and her peculiar sense of distraction increased.

He made a sound of exasperation, unclasped his hands, and flung them up in dismay. “
Ne t’en fais pas,
” he muttered, apparently speaking to himself. “
Sois patiente
!”

That voice. Ten years jumbled inside her, leaving her
stunned, uncomprehending, unable to fathom that the world could have brought him here, at this point in her life, when her life was falling apart and starting over. After all, he had set her on this course.

She took another step forward, reaching toward him with both hands. Joy and disbelief welled up in her throat. When she tried to speak, the best she could manage was a whisper. “You can stop tellin’ yourself to be patient, Doc. I’m here.”

H
e whipped around, his reaction so swift and intense that she felt the emotional power like a wave of heat. The large, dark eyes were deeply creased at the corners but had lost none of their breath-stealing effect. The face was even more brutal in its uncompromising strength, like granite that has been stripped of softer rock through the action of time and storms. But it was spellbinding. The scar still made a diagonal slash on his chin, and above it his mouth still held its tough appeal.

What was there to say? After her initial effort she went blank and simply stared up at him, her hands rising in shock to her face. She believed that she was smiling but couldn’t think clearly enough to be certain. She
knew
that she was bewildered but also delirious with pleasure. And that she was afraid of the way he made her feel.