Darkling I Listen (2 page)

So how the hell did Anticipating find him?

Brandon
searched his pockets for cigarettes.

Brisk and efficient, Betty reached into a drawer, plucked up a new pack of Winstons, and tossed them to him. His fingers ripping at the cellophane,
Brandon
walked to the window and looked down on his uncle, who had taken a break from his sawing to sit on a tree stump and catch his breath. His old basset hound Rufous lay at his feet, graying muzzle resting on the tip of Henry's Red Wing boot.

"Stubborn old coot,"
Brandon
said affectionately as he slid the cigarette between his lips,
then
dug the lighter out of his pocket. His gaze searched the distant line of trees, looking for an Uzi-packing terror who called herself Anticipating. "We argued for an hour over which of us was going to cut that damn firewood. Says I'll cut my leg off,
then
no one in
Hollywood
will hire me. As if they will anyway." He sucked on the cigarette and enjoyed the bite of it in his lungs. He felt the tension in his shoulders start to relax.

"Now don't you be getting down on yourself again, Mr. Brandon. You'll be back on top before you know it. When the right part comes along." Betty lowered the oven door and, with oven-mitted hands, reached in for the bubbling, lattice-topped pie. She set it on the pie safe to cool,
then
opened the refrigerator to extract what was left of a ham and a bowl full of mustard potato salad. "Mr. Henry will want to eat before he goes to his doctor's appointment. Can I fix you a sandwich?"

Grinning,
Brandon
shook his head. "This isn't in your job description, you know. We pay you to see to my aunt's welfare. I think Henry and I can blow our own noses and slap a little mayo and ham on bread when we get hungry."

"I enjoy it." She beamed, showing slightly yellow teeth that were smudged with red lipstick. "You're like family to me, Mr. Brandon. It all gives me a sense of … purpose. I've got no family of my own, you know. Besides, if I wasn't looking after you and Mr. Henry, I'd be wasting my time on soap operas and Jerry Springer."

"There's always Oprah."

"Can't watch her now." Betty gave her shoulder-
length,
plum-red curls a shake. They bounced over her bulky shoulders that were clad in a crisp cotton long-sleeved blouse. "She's lost weight again. I hate it when she loses weight. She gets cocky. I can tolerate fat and cocky, but I can't handle thin and cocky. Oh, my, we're out of pickles. Remind me to add that to my grocery list. You know how Mr. Henry loves his bread and butters. Are you sure you don't want a sandwich?"

Her head swung around, and she stared at him with cow eyes the color of rich alfalfa.
Brandon
suspected she wore tinted contacts. No one's eyes were that green.

"I'll cut you a piece of pie once it cools," Betty offered. "It'll run if I cut it too hot."

"I'll grab something in town." He took another drag on his cigarette.

"I'll be cooking one of your favorites tonight," she announced as she reached for a loaf of Mrs. Baird's thin-sliced white bread. "Chicken-fried steak and fried fresh okra."

He watched his uncle bend over and scratch Rufous atop his head. The dog was sitting up now and staring toward the pine forest, head cocked and ears perked. His hackles were raised. "I won't be here for supper," he replied absently, and refocused on the distant trees. "I have a date."

"A date?"

Something in the way Betty coughed out "A date" made
Brandon
look around. Betty's square face, with its heavily colored cheeks, looked a little clownish as she stared at him in nothing less than astonishment.

"With whom?" she asked, pressing her hand against the tented gladioli on her chest. No doubt Betty was astonished, as was he. He'd rarely left the farm since moving back to Ticky Creek, and he never socialized.

"Charlotte Minger. She's a checker at Wal-Mart."

"Blond
? '
Bout five-six? With an IQ of thirty if she's lucky?"

Brandon
tapped his ashes into his cupped palm and grinned. "One and the same, except I think you exaggerated her IQ."

Betty's mouth flattened. "Why?"

"Why?" He raised his eyebrows and shifted his shoulders. "I guess she caught me at a vulnerable moment. It didn't help that she had on a skirt the size of a Band-Aid." Betty's eyes narrowed, causing
Brandon
's face to grow warm. He blew out a stream of smoke and shrugged. "Or maybe I'm just tired of living like a goddamn monk."

"She's half your age."

"Bullshit. I'm only thirty-five."

"If that gal is a day over seventeen, I'm Cindy Crawford. The last thing you need right now is to get yourself in trouble with a minor."

"She's twenty. I asked her."

"Check her driver's license. And besides, twenty is too young for a man your age."

Brandon
laughed and crushed out his cigarette in the sink. "If you want to preach about old men and young babes, go yap at Jack Nicholson and Mike Douglas. Christ, we're only going for a burger, not to the Flea-bite Motel. I'll be home by eleven, I promise." He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, and added softly, "But I thank you for giving a damn, Betty. It means a hell of a lot to me. You know that."

The phone rang.
Brandon
grabbed the receiver off the hook and walked to his aunt's bedroom door.

"Hello?"

"Darling, I was hoping you'd be in, and not out on that dreadful tractor. I have visions of your gorgeous body being chewed up and packed into little square things that are fed to pigs and such."

"Hello, Mildred." He glanced back at Betty and rolled his eyes. "I was expecting you to call last night."

"Darling, I was wining and dining Spielberg last night. I've almost got him convinced to use you in his next project."

"You're such a liar, Mildred."
Brandon
turned down the volume on the television and wondered who Mildred thought she was kidding. Then he reminded himself that such bullshit was the norm for agents. Part of their job was filling their insecure and paranoid clients with just enough fairy takes to keep them believing that their agents were actually earning their fifteen percent.

Receiver pressed between his ear and shoulder, he flipped a Kleenex from a box and carefully dabbed at his aunt's damp chin, then adjusted the lap blanket across her knees, gently tucking it under her bony thighs. "If you were the last agent in the business, Spielberg still wouldn't give you the time of
day,
much less eat at the same table with you."

"Oh, I forgot. I'm good enough only for egomaniac has-beens who actually believe anyone in Hollywood would want them after they've spent three years in prison for killing a sadomasochistic porno queen."

"Fuck you, Mildred." He slammed the receiver down so hard the phone bell pinged and the wall vibrated. It rang again immediately. He slammed it again, harder, causing Betty to hurriedly close the kitchen cupboard door before the glasses on the shelves tumbled to the floor. The third time it rang, he answered it, saying nothing, his fingers strangling the receiver so tightly his knuckles hurt.

"I'm coming to
Texas
," Mildred said. Clearly, she wasn't remotely intimidated by his heavy breathing or his borderline nuclear temper that, once exceeding its boiling point, became lethal, as too many producers and directors had discovered over the years … not to mention previous agents.

"I don't want you coming to
Texas
again." His voice shook with controlled emotion, making Mildred Feldman sink a little deeper in her chair and close her eyes, recalling just how throaty his voice could get, how tremulous it became in throes of passion. She'd had a lot of men, but never one so driven by raw emotion as Brandon Carlyle.

"By why not, Darling? It's been what, seven, eight months since they let you out of that horrible little cage? Surely by now you've pulled yourself together enough to get back to work. Surely by now you've grown tired of mucking horse shit and slopping pigs, not to mention rubbing elbows with a lot of Gomers. You must be going stark raving mad. Talk to me, Darling. Tell Mildred all about it."

Silence. Then, "I'm not ready. I may never be ready again. So why don't you just leave me the hell alone for a while? I have to think."

"You're not getting any younger,
Brandon
. There are a great many younger leading men stepping into your shoes. DiCaprio, Affleck, Damon. You're thirty-five, Sweetheart. Pretty soon you won't appeal to all those nubile females who made you the biggest box office draw since Tom Cruise strutted across the screen in
Top Gun."

She picked up a copy of an old tabloid emblazoned with a bleary photograph of Brandon in handcuffs, sandwiched between two of LAPD's finest "Let's face it, Sweetie, it may take you years to recover from this fiasco with Emerald Marcella—if you recover at all. Remember, even before your Ferrari with Emerald in it took a deep dive through that guardrail, you were already up to your cute ass in problems."

"I thought an agent was supposed to boost her client's self-esteem."

"Only when the client dutifully kisses said agent's butt."

Silence again. He was brooding. Sulking. Simmering. Imagining nasty ways he could pay her back for rubbing the truth in his face. Obviously, he wasn't boozing, or by now he would have cut her to the bone with sarcasm and indignities.

Smiling, she slid her feet to the floor and sat forward, elbows on the desk, her long, red fingernails stroking the phone cord. "So, I'm coming to
Texas
. I'll check out the
Dallas
market, maybe see
who's
filming at Las Colinas. Maybe you could do a cameo. I'll make a few phone
calls,
run your portfolio by a few of the commercial agents in the area. We'll do dinner … or something."

Brandon
hung up the phone without saying goodbye. Feeling that if he didn't hit something in the next few seconds, he was going to disintegrate before Betty's concerned eyes, he left the house. He stood on the porch with his hands jammed in his jeans pockets and his brain scrambling over all the reasons he should fire Mildred Feldman the instant she showed her nose in Ticky Creek. She was mean, spiteful, and one of the worst agents in the business. Only losers like
himself
even gave her the time of day. He'd considered firing her at least a hundred times. That idea had lasted long enough for a dozen agents to hang up in his ear.

What a bitch, insinuating that he was past his prime. Hell, his body had never been in better shape now that he'd sweated all the Chivas out of his system. His brain felt sharp and clear, most of the time, when it wasn't bogged up with self-pity and numb from tedium. There was still his anger to deal with, of course. He was cursed with a short fuse, which got all the shorter when he drank. He'd learned at an early age to give as good as he got, and most of the time what he got was a lot of abuse, physical, mental, and emotional. So he gave it back in spades. Why the hell not?

Rufous tore off down the long driveway, baying, ears flapping,
ignoring
Henry's shouts to heel. Henry rounded the house, shaking his head and laughing. A red bandanna flagged out of the hip pocket of his faded overalls. Something in
Brandon
softened and sank at the sight of his uncle, bald head shimmering with sweat and his face ruddy from exertion.

"Damn dog's got him a scent," Henry announced as he reached for the bandanna in his pocket. "I'm wondering when he's going to wake up to the fact that he's just too damn old to be chasing rabbits." He smiled at
Brandon
, his blue eyes twinkling with amusement. "Guess I've got a lot of room to talk, huh?"

"At least you're using good sense for a change, and not out there with him."

"Not 'cause I don't want to be, for sure. Nothing like a good rabbit chase first thing in the morning. Gets the old heart to racing."

Brandon
looked away. "Speaking of racing hearts, you have your doctor's appointment. I'm driving."

Henry studied him. "Somebody's got you pissed off."

"Agents. They're all a lot of aggravation."

"Mildred again."

Brandon
nodded and Henry chuckled, slapped him on the back. "I'm smelling raisin pie and mustard potato salad. By God, Betty is spoiling us rotten."

Henry ambled into the house, allowing the screen door to slam behind him.
Brandon
wondered how many times over the course of his thirty-five years of wandering back to Ticky Creek in search of emotional comfort and stability he had heard that old screen door slam. There were times when he lay in his bed in
Malibu
or some trailer on location and dreamed he was back at his aunt and uncle's farm, sunning himself on their porch, listening to Bernie hum as she cooked and cleaned and ironed. The memory always took the edge off his temper.

Somewhere near the front gate, beyond the boxwood hedge and the mini forest of crape myrtles that in summer became a frothy cloud of pink and purple blooms, Rufous's barking became frantic. No doubt the old hound had treed a raccoon or sniffed out an armadillo burrowed up in rotting pine needles. Frowning,
Brandon
stepped off the porch and started down the drive.