Charming Grace (43 page)

I had spent so many years honoring my dead mother that I’d slighted my living one.

Don’t make the same mistake with me and Boone
, Harp whispered.

I bent my head to Candace’s, and I cried.

Chapter 18

Stone was sore. His mouth, his recapped front tooth, his feelings. All sore. “Noleene, no one understands me,” he moaned to me and everybody else in his inner circle, until Kanda said very gently but firmly, “
Sweetheart? Baby?
You’re big enough to take a punch in the puss every once in a while. Boone nearly died in the river but you don’t hear
him
complaining, do you? So. . .Sweetheart? Baby?
Quit kvetching.
” When Kanda hauled out her Yiddish, it was time to clam up.

Stone said no more. But he stewed in Yiddish-enforced silence.

Grace’s Aunt Tess came down with a case of high blood pressure and canceled her Fox interview. Word had it that G. Helen put the squeeze on the old lady like a swamp snake choking a rat.

Grace’s papa sent a letter of apology and a blank check for Stone’s dental bill.

Grace came to Casa Senterra and apologized, too. A political apology. She didn’t look sincere. Stone accepted it with grumpy diplomatic charm. He didn’t look sincere, either.

On the set of
Hero
, Abbie and Lowe looked morose, like they had bad gas all the time. They spent so much of every day huddled in each other’s trailers the crew decided they were doing the hokey-pokey. I suspected different. I smelled trouble. Grace was working ‘em like a baker works bread. Knead, release, add a little more yeast. Whether they knew it or not they were rising to her occasion, slowly but surely. Just what that occasion was, I still wasn’t certain.

Roarke didn’t spill a single word about the
love
conversation between me and Grace’s papa, so I was spared having Gracie feel sorry for me. In return, I didn’t tell a soul about Roarke’s prison record. I never would.

The National Enquirer
ran a picture of Stone coming out of his L.A. dentist’s office with a fat lower lip.

Ka-bong! Stone Loses Another Round To Grace Vance
, the headline said.

Stone gave me another raise for the good publicity I got him when I rescued Abbie out of the river.

But after the
Enquirer
came out, he canceled it.

Without any sense of irony, imbued with his usual distortion of reality, Stone got only one scene right. Harp’s death. The only part of the
Hero
script that was horribly, totally, true-to-life was the scene in which Harp died. Harp gave up his life on a fierce August morning on the rooftop of Piedmont Hospital. On a fierce August morning two years later, I prepared to watch him die, again.

That’s how it felt.

Sweating, nauseated, I stood among the cast and crew and equipment sprawling atop the broad, flat roof of Atlanta’s largest hospital, wondering if I could get through the day without saying or doing something that would only make the situation worse than it was. The scent of asphalt and steel and fetid city air roiled inside me. I hugged myself to hold everything close, my fists numb, indenting my ribs, making it harder to breathe.

The actor playing the Turn-Key Bomber headed toward me to say something. He didn’t resemble the Turn-Key in any significant physical way; the Turn-Key (who I never thought of by name, refusing to concede any humanity to him) had been chunky and nondescript. The actor was leaner, better-looking, with heavy, sympathetic eyes as he came my way. Strapped to him were bulging canvas packets fitted with a spiderweb of wires. The Turn-Key had covered himself in high-tech explosives and planned to die along with everyone else in the vast hospital complex beneath him. The Turn-Key had also carried a large revolver. He’d emptied that revolver into Harp’s chest right before Harp sank a hunting knife into his throat.

Now the actor was not only covered in fake explosives, but carrying an all-too-real-looking revolver of the same make and model that killed Harp.

“Mrs. Vance,” he began in a careful tone. “I just want you to know—”

I gave a quick shake of my head. The look on my face must have screamed at him. He halted and began backing up. “I’m sorry. Sorry. Shouldn’t have come near you—”

“It’s not your fault. But please stay away from me.”

Suddenly Boone angled in front of me. He waved the actor off. “Talk to her later, when you’re not in that outfit.”

The actor nodded and hurriedly disappeared into the crowd. I wavered as pinpoints of light floated through my vision. Boone cupped a hand under my elbow. “Let’s find you some shade,” he ordered. The next thing I knew we were standing under the catering tent. Despite huge fans blowing storm-force breezes throughout, the heat of the hospital roof seeped up my bare legs, wilting the faded denim skirt that had been Harp’s favorite thing for me to wear. Withering me. “Drink,” Boone ordered. I lipped the cup of ice water he held to my mouth. My head cleared. I exhaled. “When does Stone shoot Harp?”

“You mean—”

“When does he film the scene where Harp gets shot? Is it still on the schedule for this morning?” Stone was striding around the hot roof yelling instructions into a bullhorn, the crown of his bwana hat already soaked with sweat. Everything seemed to be in chaos. Boone slipped a straw into the ice water then formed my trembling hands around the cup and made me sip some more. “The scene’s still on for this morning, Gracie. But there’s no good reason for you to stay here and watch it. Nobody expects you to.”

“I was sitting in a TV studio watching on a monitor when Harp was shot. It was the most helpless feeling in the world. I have to see it happen in person, this time. I owe that to Harp.”

“
Chere
, don’t ever forget—this is just a movie.”

“Not today. Today it’s real.” I pointed to a concrete bulwark in the distance, where the crew was setting up. “Right there. That’s where it happened. Where Harp fought the Turn-Key. Where he fell. With the helicopters from the Atlanta TV stations overhead.” I stepped out of the tent and stared up into a hot, empty blue sky. “The helicopters need to be here. It’s not the way he died, not without them.”

“They’ll be added later. You know—in a studio somewhere. All edited into place, with the right sound effects and all. All
fake
.” He turned me to face him. “Gracie, look at me. Look up at me.
Straight
at me. That’s it. That’s good.
Come out of there
. Come out from inside yourself. Come out here with me. You’re real. I’m real.
We’re
real.”

“I know I sound crazy.”

“
Crazy’s
okay, chere. Just stop lookin’ two years back. Look ahead.”

“I don’t see
anything
ahead of me. Just a world without Harp.”

I hurt Boone. I hurt him with that simple remark, which had nothing to do with loving him, in my mind, but of course it sounded very much like that, to him. Boone winced. “Well, try to keep lookin’ for something or somebody worth lookin’ toward,” he said dully, then angled away from me so I couldn’t see his face. He latched a hand under my elbow again. Steadying me, even as I’d unstreadied him.

I fumbled with some kind of apology, explanation, something. Before I could say it, Abbie rushed up. “Grace,” she moaned. “Grace, I want to stand right here and watch the scene with you.” She leaned against me, draping one willowy arm around me in a hug, bowing her head to mine even though I barely flexed to accommodate her sympathy. If I lost control of one single muscle, of one nerve fiber, even one
molecule
of my body, the emotional tidal wave would break free.

Boone, I’m sorry
, I thought, but couldn’t get the thought out of my locked jaw.

“Grace.” Another voice, deep and drawling. Marvin’s accent, but not Marvin. Like Harp’s voice, but not Harp. I pivoted and stared at Lowe. He was dressed in khakis and an oversized white t-shirt. The floppy shirt clung to mysterious small bulges beneath it, dotting his chest. Lowe gave me an agonized smile. “I’ve finally got Harp’s voice right, didn’t I?”

“Yes. Yes, you’ve done it. You sound like him.”

“Grace, I’m sorry —”

“It’s all right. Go and do your job.”

He reached out, squeezed my hand, then squeezed Abbie’s outstretched hand. “Grace,” he said to her. “I love you. Goodbye.”

Abbie began to cry. I was too stunned.

As Lowe walked away, I leaned numbly toward Boone. “Why is he wearing that huge t-shirt and what’s he wearing underneath it?”

Boone was quiet for too long before he finally admitted, “They’ve rigged him to bleed when he’s shot.”

I stood very still for a few seconds, absorbing that information, then walked out into the blinding sun and headed straight for the hubbub of cameras, lights, reflectors, and microphones that now surrounded the place where Harp and the Turn-Key had fought to the death. I placed myself on the sidelines where could see every movement. I was dimly aware of Abbie crying softly behind me, and of Boone following me with his quiet, solid silence, not touching me but there if I needed him. I had brought him to the worst place a woman can bring a man who loves her, sharing a pit of grief for another man.

“On the set!” some assistant director yelled.

Lowe stepped into the center of the open space where Harp had been shot. He stood in the glare of artificial lights meant to tone down the sun. The special effects crew bustled around him. First they stripped of the utilitarian t-shirt, revealing a complex vest strapped to his bare chest. Wires intersected six tiny packets scattered between his collarbone and the bottom of his ribcage. The special effects team then brought over a button-up cotton shirt similar to the one Harp had worn—except this shirt already bore gaping, ragged holes. As my stomach slowly became a tourniquet, Lowe donned the shirt. The pre-fabricated bullet holes matched the location of each blood packet.

A dozen feet in front of Lowe, Stone peered through the lens of a camera mounted on a low platform. When he spotted me on the sidelines he frowned and lifted his bullhorn to his mouth. “Grace,” he barked, magnifying my name, echoing it off the hospital’s roof. “How’s our boy look? Not bad, right! Pretty accurate! This is going to be a great death scene!”

Fifty people stopped everything to look from Stone to me. Everyone’s mood was subdued, to say the least, and now some looked startled, even red-faced with embarrassment. As if Stone’s lack of sensitivity was anything new. Very little fazes a movie crew used to big egos and cavalier cruelty, but Stone managed to drop more than a few jaws. Lowe scowled, and behind me, Abbie moaned, “Oh, Stone,
please
.”

How could I even
respond
to the idiot? From behind, Boone bent his head close to my ear and whispered in a brutally controlled voice, “Just nod, Gracie. He’s not lookin’ for an opinion. Just an
okay
.”

I finally managed to move my head.

Stone grinned and gave me a thumbs up, then huddled behind the camera, again. “All right, Lowe, all you have to do is wait for the cue and then give me your best ‘I’m-being-shot-six-times’ reaction.”

Lowe scowled harder, braced his feet apart, and let his hands hang loosely by his sides.

After that, everything happened in a blur. I heard the cues called, and I watched Lowe stagger and jerk his arms in an expert rendition of a man being pummeled by the force of six bullets. Fake blood sprayed in huge, fan-shaped arcs from his chest.

I hadn’t been prepared for
that
. And especially not for what happened next by the sheer, strange quirk of timing, wind, and fate.

The blood hit me.

It was just a few flecks. Just a few errant drops of fake red dye that the breeze caught and flung my way. I felt the moisture strike my cheeks and forehead. I lifted a hand to my face, touched the wet spots, then lowered my hand and stared at the red on my fingertips.

I wasn’t upset by it, at that point. I was truly numb. I didn’t
want
to feel, or think, or look at Lowe, who was covered in streams of red, like some horror-movie victim. Had Harp bled like that as the news cameras taped the fight? I searched my sluggish brain. No, he’d just staggered backward, just gone red all over his shirt front, then forced himself forward, pulling his hunting knife from a sheath hidden in the curve of his back, flipping the knife blade into the cradle of his fingers with the agility I knew so well, just as he had that day in the dimestore, when we were kids. He drew back his right arm, posed the long, deadly hunting knife for a clean arc, then threw it with the last of his strength. It hit the Turn-Key in the center of the throat, and sank up to the hilt. The murderous bastard collapsed on hell-hot asphalt, his hand falling away from the switch on his vest that would have set off the massive bombs strapped to him.

Harp took a last few, staggering steps and stood over him, weaving, unsteady, alive just long enough to check that the job was done. Then slowly, almost gently, giving up the fight to the shadows that had always followed him, Harp sank to his knees, as if in prayer. Slowly he slid sideways. He settled on his back, gazing up at the blue summer sky for the last time, and then shut his eyes.