Honey Moon (7 page)

It was a wise decision, because her legs wouldn't have held her up much longer.

"You mind telling me how old you are?"

He'd hit her with a stumper right off the top. She studied him, trying to position herself by reading his intent, but his face was closed up tighter than a Ziploc bag. "Sixteen," she finally volunteered, somewhat to her surprise.

"You look like you're about twelve or thirteen."

"I look like a boy, too, but I'm not."

"I don't think you look like a boy."

"You don't?"

"Nope. In fact, I think you're kind of a cute little thing."

Before she could ask him if he was being a male chauvinist pig patronizer, he hit her with another question.

"Where're you from?"

"Paxawatchie County, South Carolina. The Silver Lake Amusement Park. It's the home of the Black Thunder Roller Coaster. You might have heard of it. It's the most famous roller coaster in the South. Some say the whole country."

"I don't believe I knew that."

"Technically speaking, I guess maybe I'm not from the park any longer. The sheriff closed us down last week."

"I'm sorry to hear it."

His sympathy seemed so genuine that she began to tell him a little bit about what had happened. Because he was so undemanding and he always seemed to give her the choice not to answer his gentle questions, she found herself forgetting about the other people in the room, forgetting about the lights and cameras. Crossing her legs in her lap, she rubbed her sore toes and told him everything. She spoke of Uncle Earl's death, the
Bobby Lee
, and Mr. Disney's betrayal. The only thing she didn't tell him about was Sophie's mental condition, because she didn't want him to know she had a crazy person in her family.

After a while her toes stopped aching so bad, but when she began describing their trip across the country, her insides twisted up again. "Did you see my cousin?" she asked him.

He nodded.

"How could y'all only spend five minutes with her? How could anybody treat her like that? Don't you think she's beautiful?"

"Yeah, she's real pretty, all right. I can see why you're so proud of her."

"You bet I'm proud of her. She's pretty and sweet, and she came in here even though she was half scared to death."

"She looked like she was more than half scared, Honey. She wouldn't even sit in front of the camera. Not everybody is cut out for a career in television."

"She could do it," Honey said stubbornly. "People can do anything they set their minds to."

"You've been going through life with your fists swinging for a long time, haven't you?"

"I do what I have to."

"Doesn't sound like you've had anybody looking after you."

"I look after myself. And I look after my family. I'm going to find us a house somewhere. A place where we can all be together. And we won't be on welfare, either."

"That's good. Nobody likes taking handouts."

"I think keeping your family together's the most important thing in the world."

Quiet fell between them. In the shadows beyond the lights, she saw an occasional movement. It was creepy having them watch her like this, not saying anything, just sitting there like a bunch of vultures.

"You ever cry, Honey?"

"Me? Hell, no."

"Why is that?"

"What good does crying do?"

"I'll bet you cried when you were a little kid."

"Only right after my mother died. From then on, whenever things got tough, I rode Black Thunder. I guess that's one of the best things about a roller coaster."

"How's that?"

She wasn't going to say that she felt close to God on the coaster, so she simply said, "A coaster gives you hope. You can pretty much ride a good one through the worst tragedy life throws at you. You can even ride it through somebody dying, I guess."

A noise distracted her. Beyond the cameras, she saw Eric Dillon slap the metal doors with the flat of one hand and stalk out.

The man sitting next to her shifted his weight. "I'm going to ask you to do something for me, Honey, and I don't think it'll be too hard. The way I look at it, these people here owe you a favor. You came all this way to see them, the least they can do is put you and your cousin up at a fine hotel for a few nights.

You'll have plenty to eat and people to wait on you, and they'll pay for everything."

She eyed him suspiciously. "These people here don't think I'm any better than a maggot on spoiled meat. Why would they pay for me and Chantal to stay in some fancy hotel?"

"Because I'm gonna tell them they have to."

His absolute certainty filled her with a combination of envy and adoration.

Someday she wanted to be powerful like him, to have people do exactly what she said. She thought over his offer and couldn't see any obvious hitch.

Besides, she didn't think she could manage the drive back to South Carolina without some decent food and a night's sleep. Not to mention the fact that she'd just about run out of money.

"All right. I'll stay. But only until I decide I'm ready to go."

He nodded and everybody began to move at once. There was a whispered conference in the back of the studio, and then the frazzled-looking assistant who had originally taken Chantal to her audition came forward. After introducing herself as Maria, she told Honey she would help her get settled in a hotel. Maria pointed out some of the other people in the studio. The stern-faced woman was the casting director and Maria's boss. The man in the suit and tie with the silver hair was Ross Bachardy, one of the producers.

Maria led her to the studio doors. At the last minute, Honey turned back to address the man who had rescued her.

"I'm not ignorant, you know. I recognized you the moment I set eyes on you. I know exactly who you are."

Dash Coogan nodded. "I figured you did."

* * *

As the doors swung closed on Maria and Honey, Ross Bachardy slapped down his clipboard and shot up from the chair. "We need to talk, Dash. Let's go to my office."

Dash tapped his pockets until he came up with an unopened pack of peppermint LifeSavers. He pulled on the red strip and then peeled away the coin of silver foil as he followed Ross out of the studio through a side door. They crossed a parking lot and entered a low stucco building that contained the production offices and editing rooms. Positioned at the end of a narrow hallway, Ross Bachardy's cluttered office was decorated with framed citations as well as autographed photos of the actors he had worked with over his twenty years as a television producer. A Lucite ice bucket half full of jelly beans sat on his desk.

"You were way out of line, Dash."

Dash slipped a LifeSaver in his mouth. "Seems to me that since this show is going right down the toilet, you shouldn't worry so much about the formalities."

"It isn't going down the toilet."

"I may not be a mental giant, Ross, but I can read, and that pilot script you told me was going to be so wonderful is the sorriest piece of horse crap I've ever seen. The relationship between my character and Eleanor is just plain silly.

Why would the two of them ever get married? And that's not the only problem.

Wet toilet paper is more interesting than that daughter, Celeste. It's amazing that people who call themselves writers could actually produce something like that."

"We're working with a preliminary draft," Ross said defensively. "Things are always a little rough at the beginning. The new version will be a big improvement."

Ross's reassurances sounded hollow even to his own ears. He walked over to a small bar and pulled out a bottle of Canadian Club. He wasn't much of a drinker, and certainly not this early in the day, but the strain of getting his troubled television series on the air had stretched his nerves to the breaking point. He had already splashed some into a glass before he remembered who he was with, and he hurriedly set down the tumbler.

"Oh, Christ. I'm sorry, Dash. I wasn't thinking."

Dash studied the bottle of whiskey for a few seconds, then tucked the LifeSavers into his shirt pocket. "You can drink around me. I've been sober for almost six years; I won't grab it away from you."

Ross took a sip, but he was clearly uncomfortable. Dash Coogan's old struggles with the bottle were as well known as his three marriages and his more recent battle with the Internal Revenue Service.

One of the technicians stuck his head in the office. "What do you want me to do with this videotape?

The one of Mr. Coogan and the kid."

Dash was nearest the door, and he took the cassette. "You can give it to me."

The technician disappeared. Dash looked down at the cassette. "This is where your story lies," he said quietly. "Right here. Her and me."

"That's ridiculous. It would be an entirely different show if we used that kid."

"That's for sure. It might not be the piece of crap it is right now." He tossed the cassette on Ross's desk. "This little girl is what we've been looking for, the element that's been missing from the beginning. She's the catalyst that'll make this show work."

"Celeste is eighteen, for chrissake, and she's supposed to be beautiful. I don't care how old your girl says she is, she doesn't look more than twelve, and she sure as hell isn't beautiful."

"She may not be beautiful, but you can't fault her for personality."

"Her romance with Eric Dillon's character fomis a major story line. She's hardly leading lady material for Dillon."

Coogan's lip curled at the mention of the young actor's name. He had made no secret of his antipathy toward Dillon, and Ross regretted introducing the subject.

"That's another point you and I happen to differ on," Dash said. "Instead of hiring somebody reliable,

you had to find yourself a pretty boy with a talent for throwing temper tantrums and causing trouble."

For the first time since they'd entered his office, Ross felt as if he were on solid ground. "That pretty boy is the best young actor this town has seen in years.

Destiny
was the network's lowest-rated soap opera until he joined the cast, and within six months, it went to number one."

"Yeah, I watched it a couple of times. All he did was walk around with his shirt off."

"And he's going to have his shirt off on this show, too. We'd be fools not to take advantage of his sex appeal. But don't get that mixed up with his talent.

He's intense, he's driven, and he's barely tapped the edges of what he can do."

"If he's so talented, he should be able to handle a more challenging story line than a romance with one of those Texas lingerie models you're trying to hire to play my daughter."

"The concept of the show—"

"The concept doesn't work. That cornball plot about a second marriage isn't cutting it because the audience is never going to understand why the stuck-up city lady and the cowboy got married in the first place. And nobody in the world will believe any of those beauty queens you brought in to audition is really my daughter. You know as well as I do that I'm no Lawrence Olivier. I play myself on the screen. It's what people expect. Those girls and I don't fit together."

"Dash, we didn't even have the kid read any lines. Look, if you're serious about this, I'll have her come back tomorrow and the two of you can do that opening scene between Dash and Celeste. Than you'll see how ridiculous this whole idea is."

"You still don't get it, do you, Ross? We're not reading that opening scene together. It's a piece of crap. That little girl isn't going to be playing Celeste.

She's going to play herself. She's going to play Honey."

"It upsets the whole concept of the show!"

"The concept stinks."

"She came out of nowhere, and we don't know a damned thing about her."

"We know that she's part kid and part field commander. We know that she's years younger than her real age and a few decades older, both at the same time."

"She's not an actress, for chrissake."

"She may not be, but you look me in the eye and tell me you didn't feel some kind of excitement when you watched her talk to me."

Ross held out a hand, palm open, in a gesture of appeasement. "All right, she's quite a character, I'll give you that. And I'll even go so far as to admit that the two of you together had some interesting moments. But that's not what
The
Dash Coogan Show
is about. You and Liz are supposed to be newlyweds with nearly grown children. Look, Dash, we both know the pilot script isn't what we hoped it would be, but the writing will improve. And even without a great opening script, the show's going to work because people will tune in to see you.

America loves you. You're the best, Dash. You always have been, and nothing's going to change that."

"Yeah. That's right. Nobody plays Dash Coogan like I do. Now how about you stop grin-fuckin' this ol' boy and let those high-priced writers of yours see that videotape? Judging by their track records, they aren't half as stupid as they seem. Give them forty-eight hours to come up with a new concept."

"We can't change the concept of the show at this late date!"

"Why not? We don't start filming for six more weeks. The sets and locations don't have to change. Just give it a try. And tell them to forget the laugh track while they're at it."

"The show's a comedy, for chrissake!"

"Then let's make it funny."

"It is funny," Ross said defensively. "A lot of people think it's pretty goddamn funny."

Dash spoke with a core of sadness in his voice. "It's not funny, and it's not honest. How about asking the writers to try to make it at least a little bit honest this time?"

Ross gazed after Dash as he walked out of his office. The actor had a reputation for doing his job but ignoring the details. He had never heard of Dash Coogan worrying about a script.

Ross picked up his drink and took a long, thoughtful sip.

Maybe it wasn't so strange that Dash was taking more of an interest in this project than in others. The ravages of a hard life had stamped themselves on the actor's face, camouflaging the fact that he was barely forty years old. He was also the last of a proud breed of movie cowboys that had been given life in the early 1900s with William S. Hart and Tom Mix. A breed that had blazed into glory with Coop and the Duke in the fifties and then grown cynical with the times in the Eastwood spaghetti westerns of the seventies. Now Dash Coogan was an anachronism. The last of America's movie cowboy heroes was trapped in the eighties trying to fit on a screen much too small to contain a legend. No wonder he was running scared.