In Some Other World, Maybe: A Novel (16 page)

So cold he’s forgotten the seemingly permanent knot in his right thigh and the continents of fading bruises along his torso from wire work, where producers probably should have sprung for a stunt double, but Adam was too happy to be working on something that didn’t suck to say anything.

So cold he’s stopped worrying about the pained whine his cell phone kept making and turned it off, accepting it will be on terminal roam for the duration of his time in Canada.

So cold his first instinct is to say no when Cecily Beissel—Cecily of the Jericho Jeans ads—asks him to grab a drink and talk about their upcoming love scene when/if they finish shooting for the night. Of course it’s entirely possible she’s not asking him out and he’s simply suffering hypothermic delusions.

“I figured it would be a nice way to break the ice before we have to put on body stockings.” Cecily has a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve”—she lowers lovely brown eyes—“never really done anything like this before.”

Yep, a model with a jeans-ad-caliber ass is asking him to talk her through their sex scene, off the clock, and he doesn’t want to because he’s chilly. He realizes this would not be the response of the average twenty-nine-year-old heterosexual male. He also realizes it probably has less to do with body heat lost through his naked head and more with the way he’d left things with Phoebe in LA, somehow weirder than the way they usually left things in their long history of leaving things weird.

“It doesn’t have to be a big deal.” Cecily slides a long red hair behind her ear. “There’s a little divey place by the hotel. They serve cheese cubes and crackers.”

Adam has to be shirtless and waxed in their love scene; cheese is far from a selling point.

“I’m not…” he begins.

He would be shocked if he’s slept more than forty hours total since he arrived for preshoots twelve days ago, and because of the head-shaving/makeup applying, his call is a good two hours earlier than everyone else’s. He should go back to his room, eat something other than craft table pretzels, rest, figure out the cell phone thing—a blocked number has been repeatedly trying to call.

But … he only has one scene near the end of the day tomorrow, and he’s so alive and excited from working on a project that might be good that he probably wouldn’t sleep anyway.

“Please.” Cecily smiles.

Which is why two hours later he’s at a bar called Polly’s Cave throwing a flightless dart at a faded board. He hits the bull’s-eye again.

“I get the feeling you’ve done this before.” Cecily laughs and retrieves the darts. She’s changed from Cordelia Snow’s white robes into a pair of jeans and a fitted T-shirt with a pink pig on the chest. Pigs seem to be a big thing for her. Yesterday she’d worn pig earrings, and there’s a pig on the bag where she keeps her knitting supplies; she’s been working on a sweater between takes. “I feel like I’m being hustled.”

“I grew up with my grandparents.” He sips a local microbrew she’d picked out, Enchanted Ale. “I kick ass at shuffleboard and minigolf, too.”

They’re two of a handful of customers, and Polly’s Cave definitely lives up to the moniker, with poor lighting, wood-paneled walls, and a mothbally odor. For added oddity, the bartender, who radiates dislike for Adam, has a black patch over his left eye. They do, in fact, serve cheese and Ritz crackers in lieu of snack mix.

Popping what must be her fifteenth cheddar chunk, Cecily manages to land a single dart on the target. And because they’re in a bar, playing a bar game, and an attractive woman is performing poorly, Adam is required, by bar law, to advise her, position her hips in a better stance, adjust her throwing arm—her creamy skin in his still-cold hand. She’s losing less badly when they abort the game and take seats at the long counter.

“Thanks for doing this with me,” she says, as if the evening has truly been a hardship. “It’s just, we haven’t had much time together, and I wanted to know I was pronouncing your last name right before I had to lick your head.”

“Is that actually in the script?” He grins, realizes he’s having a good time, points to her empty bottle. “Can I get you another?”

She nods and excuses herself to the ladies’ room.

The second she turns, it’s as if his off button has been hit. Instantly he’s so tired the simple act of being upright feels Olympian, and he sags into the bar stool, thankful it’s not backless. He needs sleep and a thorough scrub—he’d washed off all the makeup in his trailer, but he hasn’t showered since dawn. And he’s still freezing, even in the sheepskin jacket he bought his first hour off the plane, when he’d been cold but still had hair.

Staring at his beer bottle until his eyes blur, Adam peels the label off in thin strips wet with condensation. He wonders if Phoebe’s behind the bar at Rosebud.

She’d taken Adam to the airport, hugged him good-bye so tight he could hardly breathe, Anais Anais and vanilla-scented lotion heavy around him. Lips against his ear, Phoebe had whispered, “You know how proud of you I am?” He was only going to BC for three weeks, but it felt like a good-bye for longer, and it dawned on him that it would be
much
longer if the show got picked up. Still in Phoebe’s death grip embrace, he’d turned her body ever so slightly, until his mouth was on hers. It wasn’t that she didn’t respond, she did, even ran fingers through his hair (he’d still had hair then) to bring him closer. But when she pulled away, there was something about her smile—it was the pouty practiced one she used on auditions and with customers at Rosebud. Like a line drive to the nuts, he realized he might very well end up just one more guy Phoebe Fisher had known in LA, realized that would bother him.

At this bar, in Canada, the bartender gives him a look, and Adam sweeps the shredded beer label off the counter into his palm, dutifully orders another round.

“So are you some famous actor or millionaire?” the eye-patched bartender asks. “I mean, I know who
she
is.” He cocks his head toward Cecily on her way back from the bathroom. “Should I know you?”

There’s blatant accusation in this guy’s question, and Adam is so beat he doesn’t ask if the bartender has seen
Graphic
or
Super Temps
or any of the other movies in which Adam has had small parts. Doesn’t tell the bartender he might recall his voice from the
Mortal Warrior
video games or the
Go Go Trons
Saturday-morning cartoon series. No one
ever
recognizes Adam, and it seems like an awful lot of words to get through.

“Me,” Adam says, “I’m nobody.”

Bartender smirk-sighs. “Well, Mister Nobody, I’d watch myself if I were you; men turn into animals around a girl like that.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

As Cecily makes her way back, Adam physically
pushes
all remaining energy to the surface, like squeezing final dollops from a toothpaste tube. Unslouching, tightening muscles, turning so she’ll be facing the left side of his face, the cheek with the dimple.

“Did you read the
E&E
comics growing up?” he asks when she’s next to him at the bar, her chair closer than before.

“Never.” She dips her head to his as if sharing covert information. “Honestly, the first time I even saw the movies was after my screen test. Don’t tell.”

“I’ll take it to the grave.”

“How ’bout you?”

Adam tells her he had a passing familiarity with the comics but actually bought several of the collected volumes before he auditioned.

“They’re incredibly dark, like the ending scene in the first issue is the same from the movie, Rowen blowing up the whole East Coast while Cordelia begs him to stop.” He shrugs, tries to gauge if she’s actually interested; her attention is unexpectedly rapt.

“I’d love to see them sometime.”

“I have them at the hotel.” The words are out of his mouth before he recognizes how suggestive they sound. Behind the bar Cyclops Bartender realizes too, shakes his head.

“Are you inviting me to your room?” Her hand on his shoulder again.

Adam’s got just enough bravado left to smile. “Would you like me to invite you to my room?”

She nods, and he sets a twenty on the bar.

As Adam helps Cecily into her leather jacket, Cyclops Bartender looks at him with equal parts envy and anger. And he can’t resist.

“Adam Zoellner,” he says, taking Cecily’s extended hand. “That’s my name.”

*   *   *

Thank God for hotel cleaning staff.

When Adam left that morning before 6:00
A.M.
, it looked as though his suitcase had exploded, something he completely forgot until the moment he’s sliding the key card into the slot, Cecily indecently close behind him. But when he opens the door and taps on the track lighting, everything is in perfect order, clothes folded neatly on the luggage rack, shoes lining the wall, the
E&E
graphic novels and the sides for the next day stacked on the desk.

Out of long-established habit, he takes off his coat and empties his pockets on the dresser—keys to his car and apartment (both in LA and completely useless), wallet, spare change, phone. Fuck, he’s missed two more calls.

“Your room is bigger than mine.” Cecily walks toward the window, pulls aside quilted drapes to reveal the shimmering skyline. “Your view is better, too.”

He contemplates saying it’s a better vista now that she’s in it, rethinks, and joins her by the glass. It’s frigid here, too, and he fights back a shiver, shudders freely a half second later when Cecily runs fingers down the back of his neck, rubs her ridiculously soft cheek against his.

“I have a confession,” she whispers. “I’ve seen everything you’ve ever been in. Like, I even tracked down a tape of
Goners
.”

“I’m sorry you had to see that.” He smiles, cock fighting viciously against his pants, because, yes, it
is
a turn-on when a model tells you she’s seen your obscure work. “There’s a reason some pilots don’t go.”

“I think you’re talented.”

“Do you now?”

Kissing, kissing, more kissing. Against the window, cold glass on his bare head. Against the wall, her hands fisting his sweater. She’s got him in the plush chair, hovering above him. Then she’s in his lap. When she finally breaks contact, her lips are swollen.

“I’ll be right back.” She struts toward the bathroom.

Moving toward the bed, Adam starts to take off his thin gray sweater but pauses at the blinking message light on the hotel phone, glances at his cell.

His grandparents
are
getting older; he should probably check.

Five messages from Phoebe on the hotel phone, the initial one placed mere minutes after he’d left. In the first two, her voice is too wet and raw for Adam to understand what she’s saying. Crush in his guts that she’s been trying to reach him
all
day and he’s been playing darts with a jeans model. Midway through the third message, he’s almost pieced events together, when Cecily reappears wearing a lace thong and a matching bra. His expression makes her face fall. Sitting on the chair, she crosses her legs.

Phoebe’s fifth and last voice mail, left two hours ago, is clear: “The funeral is tomorrow at two. You don’t need to come or anything. But, I dunno, maybe you could call me?”

On the nightstand the alarm clock reads 2:15
A.M.
, which he thinks puts things after four in Chicago.

“Your girlfriend?” Cecily asks flatly.

“Not really…”

“Don’t worry, it’s late anyway—”

“Her brother, he’s, um … dead.”

The words take a second to register. “Oh, God.” Bones in Cecily’s face shift, and he realizes her beauty is a tad north of freakish, absently wonders if she was teased in high school. “I’m so sorry.”

“The funeral’s tomorrow—today, I guess … I should. I have to go.”

On her feet (still in her underwear, but on her feet), Cecily is talking him down, explaining there probably aren’t any flights leaving for a few hours, telling him to pack a bag. He must look confused, because she offers her knitting satchel with the pig on it, starts removing balls of yarn and needles. Finally he nods, throws in a change of underwear, nothing close to a suit, but he has a pair of black pants and a different gray sweater, phone charger, dress shoes.

“Um, when’s your call tomorrow?” Cecily is miraculously back in her clothes.

“Not until four; I only have the pool scene.”

“I can explain to Mick and the crew, but maybe you should have your agent call somebody.” The way she’s saying this, Adam realizes leaving could really,
really
screw up his career. “I mean, especially if you’re not back by Friday…”

Friday, where he has what’s slated to be another fourteen-hour day of filming, is all of twenty-one hours away, and Adam has no idea how long it will take to get to Chicago from Vancouver. Still, he nods, tells Cecily he’ll have Marty reach out, that he’ll fly in for the day and then take a red-eye back. She looks less than convinced about the quality of this plan. Still, she calls a car service and rides the elevator down to the lobby to wait with him for the black Lincoln.

“Good luck.” She squeezes his hand, adds, “Godspeed.”

*   *   *

As Cecily predicted, the entire airport is on skeleton crew when he arrives shortly after three. It takes a while to locate an airline employee who can sell him a ticket, and she yawns apologetically through the transaction. Adam will have a layover in Phoenix, Houston, or Salt Lake City. If he can wait until two, there’s a direct flight to Chicago.

“I wouldn’t take that one, though,” the yawning clerk advises. “It’ll probably get canceled; they’re expecting weather in the afternoon.”

Salt Lake leaves earliest and seems his only chance at getting in anywhere near the time of the funeral. So Adam plunks down his credit card for a ticket costing more than a month’s rent. After that, it seems prudent to find a phone booth, call his agent, and see if it’s possible
not
to get fired.

Knowing Marty will be royally pissed when he hears of Adam’s misadventures, and also knowing Marty won’t be in the office until ten, Adam leaves the message for him there and hopes everything will magically be resolved by the time he lands in Utah.