Charming Grace (32 page)

She hasn’t heard about Diamond’s fight scenes, yet
, I thought.

He grumbled, chewed his cud a minute, then shrugged. His smile broke through. “You’re right. What’s twenty-thousand here and there, to me? Just pocket change.”

“I
know
,” she said grimly.

She reached the verandah steps. “Afternoon, Ms. Vance,” I said.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Noleene.”

Stone leapt ahead of her. “Outta the way, Noleene. Let me open these doors for the lady. . .”

“He’s here! He’s here!”

Stone’s daughters burst out of a side door and went tearing across the lawn. They’d been watching from a window all day. Mojo waved a small van up the drive. Kanda and the Irish nannies—sturdy, black-haired twenty-somethings dressed in jeans and J Lo t-shirts—ran after the girls.

The van’s driver opened its back doors, slid a ramp into place, and opened a travel crate. I dreaded what I knew was coming next.

Shrek waddled out into the Georgia sunshine, grunting happily as the girls patted and hugged him. When he spotted me, he squealed and headed my way, tugging both laughing little girls along behind at the end of his custom leather leash.

Stone chortled. “Your pig’s here, Noleene! Look’s like Schwarzenegger’s missed you!” Stone had nicknamed the pig for Arnold that summer. Schwarzenegger—the human one—was riding high after the third
Terminator
movie, plus planning to run for governor of California, so in Stone’s mind the big Austrian had risen back to a pig-sized dissin’ level. “Take Schwarzenegger for a walk, Noleene, and give him a bite of fudge.” Stone grabbed Grace by one ladylike elbow. “Comeon, Grace, let’s go inside out of this heat. I can’t wait to present you to the big studio execs!”

I tried to ignore Grace’s eyes but I felt her looking at me and couldn’t resist. Her greens were sad and sympathetic. I shook my head.
You can’t help me, and I can’t help you
.

Stone dragged her inside the house, leaving behind a cold rush of indoor air with her light perfume on it, making me dizzy and crazy with need and mad at the world. I forced my face into prison-yard neutral. Shrek waddle-trotted up the veranda steps and slobbered all over the front of my khakis. His pink, curly tail twitched. The girls giggled and pulled on his leash, but he oinked merrily and gnawed my kneecaps. I scratched him between the ears.

“Call him by his Cajun name, Boonie!” the girls begged.

I nodded. “Hello, Le Snout Du Oink.”

The girls laughed. Shrek drooled happily on my shoes.

There I was. Guarder of fudge and cars and drooling pigs.

Stone decided to debut me, his prize
Hero
widow, during the most prestigious cinematic event in all of northern Georgia: The Dahlonega International Film Festival. Okay, yes, most people didn’t usually put “Dahlonega” and “International” in the same sentence unless they were talking about dinner at the Magic Wok Chinese restaurant next to the Wal-Mart. But though it was only a few years old, the DIFF had begun to chug along respectably.

A small army of student volunteers from North Georgia College and a cabal of hip urban indie film types from Atlanta ran the annual summer film fest, which featured nearly two-hundred entries from all over the world, most of which were exhibited at the town’s renovated, 1930’s-era, one-screen theater, The Holly, or at makeshift auditoriums on the tree-shaded college campus. The DIFF awards, which looked like abstract blue peanuts cut out of plywood, would be presented on Sunday night.

The films ran the gamut from avant-garde to avant-garder. One of that year’s prime entries was titled
The Life Of A Bicycle From Prague
, in Czech with French subtitles. Not exactly popcorn-scented, Saturday-night-at-the-drive-in fare. The average DIFF film buff was a sincere alternate-lifestyler with a vegetarian sandwich in his or her knapsack, wearing a nose ring, a vintage Grateful Dead t-shirt, and skin the color of a three-day old corpse.

By comparison, the average Stone Senterra fan was a ruddy-faced burger-gulper who looked like he’d just parked his jacked-up SUV in a handicapped zone while he kicked some sissy ass before raising the Stars and Stripes over a picture of Mom and Apple Pie. When Senterra Productions put the word out that Stone was going to introduce me, talk about
Hero
, and show clips from his film oeuvre at the DIFF, his fans showed up in mass. Stone’s fans fit in at DIFF the way bubblegum goes with granola.

“There’s
another
guy wearing a fake spacesuit,” Mika chortled. We were standing behind the curtain on The Holly’s tiny stage, waiting for Stone to arrive. She peeked around the curtain’s edge, again. “This is the most incredible costume event since my last
Star Trek
convention.” She pointed. “And look at that one! Leo! Which film of your dad’s is that guy paying
homage
to? He looks as if he’s wearing a mummified horse head with antennae on it.”

“
Kill Or Be Killed
,” Leo intoned. “The alien bad guy was a cross between
Mr. Ed
and a giant cricket.”

She pointed in another direction. “What are those guys on the back row? The ones in the six-armed black-leather jackets?”

“Gorkians. The mutant humanoid hit squad who chased Dad in
Outlaw Planet
.”

“Who are the ones dressed in white dusters and cowboy hats?”

“From Dad’s only Western.
Showdown At High Plains
.” Leo frowned gingerly. His jaw was healing nicely. But he hadn’t gotten up the nerve to tell his father he wanted to be a computer games designer. He sighed. Mika wound an arm through his. They resumed peeking at the audience. Leo rattled off sightings of more Senterra impersonators. “There’s the psycho, one-eyed Russian mafia leader Dad fought as a small-town police chief who secretly used to be an army special ops commando, and there’s the psycho, scar-faced South American drug lord Dad fought as the small-town police chief who secretly used to be a
navy
special ops commando, and there’s the psycho, turban-loving Libyan terrorist Dad fought as the small-town police chief who secretly used to be a
marine
special ops commando, and—oh, crap. There’s one Dad won’t be happy to see.”

Mika squealed. “A guy in a diaper! Grace, you have to look. Look! A grown man dressed in nothing but a diaper!”

“No, thanks.” All this time I’d paced behind them, occasionally checking my summer suit for invisible lint or glancing in a small silver compact to confirm my make-up hadn’t melted from the gummy backstage heat. I needed my smiling, perfect mask. Stone would make a grand backstage entrance at any second. Boone and the security guards were outside coordinating his pseudo-modest arrival. I tried not to think about Boone.

“Grace,” Mika moaned, covering her laughter with both hands, “You have to come look at the diaper man.”

“Comeon, Grace,” Leo urged. “He’s carrying a sign with one of Dad’s movie slogans on it.” Leo puffed out his chest and intoned deeply, ‘Straighten That Diaper, Son. Now Drop Your Rattle And Give Me Five Push-Ups.’” Leo and Mika looked at each other, burst into strangled hoots, then chorused, “
Day Care Boot Camp.
”

Day Care Boot Camp.
I groaned. One of Stone’s rare comedies, about a tough drill sergeant who’s forced to run his sister’s day-school nursery while she goes on her honeymoon.

Then I remembered:
Harp thought that movie was funny. It was the only Senterra film he liked. He went to see that movie twice.
I gave up pretending not to care, eased the stage curtain aside, and looked out at the audience. “My God. Buzz Lightyear and the Village People had children together.”

There were only a few normal-looking humans in the crowd, most of them on the front row, wearing media badges and carrying either cameras, videocams, or notepads. I recognized a female reporter from the
Atlanta Journal/Constitution
who’d covered all my legal battles with Stone, and a guy who covered the regional film scene as a stringer for several large newspapers, including the
Los Angeles Times
. Good. They’d gotten my phone messages. I had a plan.

“Gracie,” Boone said , behind me. “It’s show time.”

I pivoted, heart racing. He’d walked up so quietly, catching me off guard. He always did. Big and lean and deceptively casual. Always dressed in the soft shoes and khakis and dark golf shirt, trying not to look like a caged wolf in sheep’s menswear. His expression was careful, his eyes dark and intense, impossible to look away from. He had been inside me. For a split second we shared a cocoon of silent intimacy. I started to say
How are you?
or something equally innocent sounding.

“Mr. Noleene! Pssst!”

Boone frowned and stepped in front of me protectively as three rough young men and a tough-faced girl hustled toward us from a side entrance the stage. I’d never seen such a combination of dreadlocks, tattoos, gold teeth, and studded wrist bands. And that was just the
girl
. All four wore dark gray t-shirts with
Street Wise
across the chests in garish, graffiti-style lettering. And all four sported the blue badges of filmmakers.

Boone’s face relaxed as he recognized them, but only a little. “You’re late.”

The group leader, whose badge named him Antwoine Louis, thumped a fist to Boone’s. “Man, we tried to get in the front doors, but this place is full of more crazy-ass rednecked white mofo’s than Saturday night at a
Hee Haw
hoedown.”

“Hey, watch the language.”

I stepped from behind Boone and held up a hand. “White mofo, here. But for the record, I don’t do hoedowns.”

Antwoine, et al stared at me. By now Mika and Leo had zoomed up behind us, their ears perked and eyes perched on stems. We all looked at Boone. He frowned. “All right, Plan B. Street Wisers, meet Grace, Leo, and Mika. Grace, Leo, Mika, meet Street Wisers. Antwoine and his co-producers got a documentary entered in the festival and I told ‘em I’d set up a little meeting with Stone. He might be able to help ‘em hook up with a distributor.”

“Man, you don’t know how much we appreciate it,” Antwoine began, “after everything else you’ve done, we didn’t expect this, too—”

Boone put a fingertip to his lips and another to one ear, listening to the transmitter tucked there. He nodded at the silent communication. Then, to Antwoine, “Mr. Senterra is on his way. Y’all go down the stage steps and wait in the edge of the audience. Mika, Leo, go down there with ‘em. Lead the cheering section. Antwoine—y’all put on your best happy faces, laugh at Mr. Senterra’s jokes, and applaud like crazy. He’ll notice. When he’s done you come back here again and I’ll do the introductions. Got it?”

They nodded and rushed for the stage steps. Giving us curious looks, Mika and Leo trailed after them. “I have to go,” Boone grunted, and started away.

I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “You bankrolled their film, I’m guessing.”

“Yeah, well, without me they’d have needed a shoestring just to have a shoestring budget.” He was clearly uncomfortable with any kudos I might offer. “They’re from New Orleans. I was in prison with Antwoine’s papa. He died there. Antwoine grew up hard, but he’s smart and he’ll make good. He has something important to say.”

“I’m guessing his film is about life on the streets? The way you and Armand grew up?”

“Yeah. Something like that. Look, I have to go—”

“Will Stone help him?”

Boone smiled thinly. “I don’t know. Stone hates documentaries. Says they have too much information in ‘em. But I have to try. Stop lookin’ at me like that.”

“It’s called
respect
.”

He lifted my hand from his arm, turned it palm-up, and brought it to his mouth for a quick, hard kiss. Then he was at the theater’s back door, swinging it open, gesturing for someone to enter, while speaking into a tiny mike clipped to his collar.

Stone burst in with an entourage that included Tex, Mojo, four uniformed security men, and an assistant who quickly gave Stone’s brown hair a fluff and a spritz of hair spray, then dabbed make-up on his forehead.

“Grace!” Stone boomed, smiling. “Let’s get out there on stage, get ready to rumble, and get real! My fans await you!”

“Oh, they’re in for a treat,” I said.