Until I Find You (104 page)

Jack came to in his hotel room. He was lying on his back on his bed with his clothes on but his shoes off; his head was pounding. Cornelia Lebrun was sitting on the bed beside him. She had wrapped a wet washcloth around some ice cubes, which she held against the swollen bruise on Jack’s right temple.
The drunken, bearded bastard could have killed me,
Jack was thinking.

“Eet’s my fauld,” Madame Lebrun was saying. “I can’t read English when eet’s in
writing-by-hand.
”

“
Longhand,
” Jack corrected her.

“I asked Dougie to read your notes out
lout
to me. Beeeg faux pas,
oui
? I theenk the word
sucked
was what deed eet to heem.”

“Or
banal—
or
prurient,
maybe.”

“
Oui.
Alzo hee’s dreenking.”

“I’ve had bad reviews myself,” Jack told her. “I didn’t try to club Roger Ebert to death with my Oscar.”

“Clup
who
to dead?” the little Frenchwoman asked.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to be in the movie,” he told her.

“I would cast a Frenchman to play Le Medec, Zzzhhhack—no matter how goot your axzent ees.”

She would never get the movie made, anyway. Later that year, after the terrorist attacks on September 11, it would be too difficult to find financing for a film about the Halifax Explosion—even with a movie star in it. Suddenly, disaster movies weren’t all that appealing. (This feeling would persist for a whole year or more.)

Something about the Halifax Explosion appeared on Canadian television, but that happened a couple of years later and Jack never saw it. He didn’t even know if it was a documentary or what Miss Wurtz would have called a
dramatization.
Jack only knew that Doug McSwiney had had nothing to do with it. And after that introduction in the bar of The Prince George, Jack doubted that he would ever work with Cornelia Lebrun.

The hotel sent a female doctor to Jack’s room while Madame Lebrun was still attending to his head injury. The doctor told Jack that he had a mild concussion; from the beat of his pulse in his right temple, he might have disputed the word
mild
with her. She also told him that he shouldn’t sleep for more than two hours at a time. The doctor left instructions at the front desk to give Jack Burns a wake-up call every two hours; if he didn’t answer his phone, someone had to go into his room and wake him up. And he shouldn’t travel for another day, the doctor said.

That night, between the wake-up calls, he had dreams of being on a movie set. “Hold the talking, please,” someone on the set would say, for what seemed like the hundredth time.

“Picture’s up.”

“Stand by.”

It made Jack realize that he missed the process. Maybe it had been too long since he’d made a movie.

In the morning, Jack walked along Barrington Street, looking for something to read. He found a bookstore called The Book Room. The owner recognized him and invited him to have a coffee with him. Jack volunteered to sign some books—just what they had on hand of the screenplay of
The Slush-Pile Reader.
(Emma’s paperback publisher had published the script; in most bookstores, the screenplay was on the shelf alongside the movie tie-in edition of Emma’s novel.)

The bookseller’s name was Charles Burchell; he turned out to be the grandson of C. J. Burchell, the legendary maritime lawyer who’d led the court-room attack on the
Mont Blanc
’s captain and pilot. When Jack told Charles that he thought he’d been born in the St. Paul’s Parish House, Charles told Jack that the vestry of the church had been used as an emergency hospital in the days following the Halifax Explosion; the bodies of hundreds of victims had been laid in tiers around the walls.

Charles was kind enough to take Jack on a tour of the harbor. Jack wanted to see the ocean terminals, particularly the pier where the immigrants landed. Charles also drove Jack to the Fairview Lawn Cemetery. Jack was curious to see the
Titanic
grave site. Halifax had seen its share of disasters.

Jack walked with Charles among the gravestones.

ERECTED TO THE MEMORY

OF AN

UNKNOWN CHILD

WHOSE REMAINS

WERE RECOVERED

AFTER THE

DISASTER TO

THE “TITANIC”

APRIL 15, 1912

There were many more.

ALMA PAULSON

AGED 29 YEARS

LOST WITH FOUR CHILDREN

Some were just names with their ages.

TOBURG DANDRIA AGED 8

PAUL FOLKE AGED 6

STINA VIOLA AGED 4

GOSTA LEONARD AGED 2

Others were just numbers.

DIED

APRIL 15, 1912

227

A small headstone marked
J. DAWSON
had the largest number of flowers—bouquets of flowers dwarfed the headstone, almost obscuring the oddly familiar name. Charles told Jack why the name was familiar. The character Leonardo DiCaprio played in the
Titanic
movie was named Jack Dawson.

“You don’t mean he was
real,
” Jack said.

“I have no idea,” Charles said.

The
J. DAWSON
on the headstone could have been a different Dawson.
Jack
Dawson, DiCaprio’s character, might have been invented. But since the movie had been released, visitors to the
Titanic
grave site put flowers on
J. DAWSON
’s headstone because they believed he was that character. Worse—whether or not Jack Dawson in the movie was related to
J. DAWSON
on the headstone, the young girls bringing flowers thought there was someone in that grave who had once looked like Leonardo DiCaprio.

“
Movies,
” Jack said with disgust. Charles laughed.

But Jack saw it then
—this
was where that hair-faced novelist and screenwriter had gotten the idea to make a love story out of the Halifax Explosion. It was a bad idea to begin with, but it hadn’t even been McSwiney’s idea. He’d stolen it from the
Titanic
movie; he’d ripped it off from a graveyard full of children!

“Does Doug McSwiney come from Halifax?” Jack asked Charles Burchell. Since Charles was a bookseller, Jack knew that Charles would know.

“Born and raised,” Charles said. “He’s an awful man—he’s always punching people.”

The
Titanic
grave site gave Jack additional grounds for wanting to kick the crap out of McSwiney, and Jack still had a headache. (As cheap shots go, a blow to someone’s temple is asking for trouble.)

Jack went back to the hotel and took a short nap. He probably did have a concussion, mild or not, because he wasn’t feeling well. He was wondering why Michele Maher hadn’t called him—just to say she was looking forward to lunch or dinner, or whatever. Maybe she was shy; probably she was busy. Jack didn’t sleep very soundly, or for long. At the first ring of the wake-up call, he sat up too suddenly and saw stars. The stars continued to twinkle while he brushed his teeth.

A separated shoulder would be a justifiable injury to inflict on Doug McSwiney, Jack was thinking. Given that McSwiney had hit Jack with a left hook, he was probably right-handed; if so, a separated
right
shoulder would be a good idea.

Jack called Dr. Maher’s office and once again got Michele’s nurse, Amanda, on the phone. “Hi, Amanda—it’s Jack Burns. I’m calling to confirm breakfast, lunch,
and
dinner.”

He could tell right away that something was wrong; the formerly friendly Amanda was ice-cold to him. “Dr. Maher is with a patient,” the nurse said.

“What’s with the
Dr. Maher,
Amanda?”

“No breakfast, no lunch, no dinner,” Amanda said. “Dr. Maher doesn’t want to see you—she won’t even
talk
to you. I canceled your reservation at the Charles.”

“Maybe I’ve misunderstood you,” Jack said. “I have a concussion.”

“That girl gave you a
concussion
?” Amanda asked.

“
What
girl?”

“I’m talking about the
Lucy
business—the photographs, the whole story. Don’t they have
news
in Canada?”

Jack could see that flaming paparazzo as if the photographer were still standing at the foot of the driveway, snapping away. One of the sleazier movie magazines had bought the photographs. The story, and the tamer of the photos, had also been on television.

“You don’t come off very well,” Amanda explained.

“I did not have sex with that young woman!” he told her.

“I’m sure you didn’t,” Amanda said. “The girl just knew that you
wanted
to, and that you definitely
would
have had sex if she hadn’t called her mother.”

“That’s not true! I called the cops and asked them to come get her! I waited outside my own house until the police came!”

“You had a naked eighteen-year-old in your bed—you even have the same psychiatrist,” Amanda pointed out. “You knew Lucy when she was a child—you beat up her father! And why did you keep her
thong,
and those terrible pictures? There was a photo of what looked like
another
naked eighteen-year-old on your desk! There were photographs of a naked woman’s tattooed breast on your
refrigerator
!”

“I threw all that away!” Jack shouted.

“Where? On your front lawn?” the nurse asked.

“Please let me speak to Michele,” he begged her.

“Michele said, ‘If Jack calls, tell him he’s just
too weird
for me.’ That’s what the doctor said,” Amanda told him, hanging up the phone.

Jack turned on the television in his hotel room. It took him a while to find an American network among the Canadian TV channels, although (as Leslie Oastler would soon inform him) the Lucy story had already been picked up by the Canadian media. When he found
Headline News,
Jack discovered that he was the lead item in the entertainment segment.

When Lucy was told that her pink thong had been recovered from Jack’s trash—together with those incriminating photographs, which Lucy had earlier described to reporters—she speculated that Jack must have wanted to have some
keepsake
of her visit and had therefore hidden her thong from the police. Apparently, he’d had second thoughts and had thrown out the thong with the other “evidence.” (The thong looked really small on TV; it appeared that Jack had stolen it from a
child.
)

Jack needed to see the sleazy magazine itself before he could understand everything that was incriminating about the photographs—that is, the ones not fit for television. He left the hotel and walked over to The Book Room. Charles Burchell was a bookseller; Charles would know where every newsstand in Halifax was. Naturally, Charles already had a copy of the movie magazine.

“I called you at the hotel, Jack, but they said you were napping.” None of the saleswomen in The Book Room would look at Jack; they’d all seen the photos and had read the insinuating story.

The magazine’s cover photo was of Lucy hanging naked from around Jack’s neck, resembling a pornographic ornament. Both police officers appeared to be struggling as much with Jack as with Lucy. The photographs inside the magazine—particularly the ones that had been rescued from his trash—were no less condemning. The pink thong was not only very small; it was still wet. Emma naked at seventeen had been doctored for magazine propriety. Jack thought that the black slash across Emma’s eyes made her unrecognizable, even to anyone who knew her at that age. And who but Jack had really known her
naked
at that age? (He’d forgotten that Mrs. Oastler was familiar with that photograph.)

In the case of those photos of his mother, the movie magazine had selected only one; there were two black slashes, across Alice’s nipples. The photo of Emma had been so badly mangled in the trash that you couldn’t see her nipples very distinctly; the magazine hadn’t bothered to conceal them, although they’d had the decency to crop the photograph above Emma’s waist.

Dr. García was mentioned in the article. Jack was sure that she would have refused to comment. But a former patient, whose name was withheld and who described the therapist’s methods as “unorthodox, to say the least,” said that Dr. García strongly discouraged her patients from dating one another. Jack knew perfectly well that Dr. García didn’t believe for a moment that he was
dating
Lucy, but everyone knows what kind of magazine would do this; the story is implied, and nothing is stated. Even the headline, the very
name
of the article, was deliberately misleading; in the case of the Lucy story, the headline was a real winner.

JACK BURNS DENIES ANY HANKY PANKY,

BUT WHAT’S HE HIDING IN HIS TRASH?

Jack hadn’t done anything, but he looked guilty. It was
too weird,
as Michele would say.

Charles Burchell was a good guy; he gave Jack his heartfelt condolences. Jack had a pounding headache by the time he got back to The Prince George. He took a couple of Tylenol, or maybe it was Advil—he wouldn’t remember taking anything.

Jack had fun calling his number in L.A. and listening to all the messages on his answering machine. Commiserations from Richard Gladstein, Bob Bookman, and Alan Hergott; Wild Bill Vanvleck had called from Amsterdam. (Jack found out later that The Mad Dutchman’s anchorwoman girlfriend had been the first to report the scandal in the Netherlands.) Someone with a St. Hilda’s connection had alerted Leslie Oastler to the story; Mrs. Oastler was hopping mad. “I can’t believe you kept that photograph of Emma,
and
those pictures of your mother. You idiot, Jack!”