CHAPTER 33
REID
Vancouver is exactly the change I need. Given the different atmosphere for this film, the older starring group (I’m the youngest cast member), the physical demands of the stunts I’m doing and the muscle I have to maintain, I’ve decided to do something I haven’t done since I was fourteen. Not that it was a choice then, just the typical restrictions of childhood.
While I’m on location, I’m going to abstain. From everything.
Alcohol, weed, pil s, sex.
While Olaf and I were adding that last five pounds, I only got high once, and I cut back on drinking solely to survive his torture sessions. (If he suspected me of drinking the night before a workout, he practical y kil ed me in the weight room.) As for sex, I haven’t been with a girl since I kissed Dori. In some twisted way, this fact is like purposeful y leaving a sweet taste in my mouth. Instead of my usual hookups, which are at best quick and dirty and done just sober enough to recal them, I have a graphical y clear memory of her soft lips opening under mine. That thought in mind, I may set a record over this time period for whacking off, from which I wil not be abstaining, for obvious reasons.
The film we’re doing is an action thril er plus love story, the script reading like a Guy Ritchie/Nicholas Sparks mash-up. My character’s romantic interest is being played by Chelsea Radin, who’s drop-dead hot and twenty-seven.
Both characters are “approximately twenty-three,” so while I’m playing up, she’s playing down. Hol ywood, yeah? We’re on our third day of filming, and the cast is grabbing lunch from craft services when she turns to me and says, “You know, you’re nothing like what I expected, from al the rumors.”
I’m picking through sandwiches, trying to avoid the tuna because we have our first kissing scene coming up after lunch. Turning to her, holding a turkey on whole wheat that would make Olaf proud, I say, “Oh? What were you expecting?”
She shrugs. “Not that I presumed you’d hit on me or anything, but you’re portrayed as this sort of evil, virtue-slaying playboy, and I haven’t seen any evidence of that.
Yet.”
I choke a little on the wedge of sandwich I’ve just bitten into, and she slams her palm on my back until I can breathe again. I give her a half-grin. “Chelsea, don’t you know you can’t trust everything you read on the Internet?” She shakes her head, her short dark hair flipping back and forth. “Photos, baby. Lots of photos. Lots of girls. My husband was actual y a little concerned when they gave you the role.”
I laugh. “Um, no offense, but you’re safe.” Damn, she’s I laugh. “Um, no offense, but you’re safe.” Damn, she’s pretty up close.
She frowns. “I’ve never been so relieved and so insulted al at one time.” Tilting her head, she peers at me like I’m a map and she’s looking for directions. “So who’s the girl?”
“Huh?”
She takes a sip of her diet cola and begins picking through the sandwiches. “The girl responsible for this transformation from virgin-eradicator to choir boy.” This train of thought conjures Dori, images of her flashing through my mind rapidly like a slideshow on speed.
She should be back in LA tonight, and in a couple of weeks, she’l be at Berkeley, studying to advance from amateur to professional do-gooder.
“I’m no choir boy, and there’s no girl.”
“Hmm,” Chelsea smiles. “If you say so.” She bites into a sandwich—unbelievably, a tuna sandwich—and saunters over to another costar to ask about his new baby.
Virgin eradicator? Harsh.
***
The afternoon scenes went wel enough, though I’ve got a hel acious bruise forming on one shoulder from a choreography error. I’m not doing all of my own stunts because I’m not suicidal. (In one, my double wil be jumping from the roof of a semi to the roof of a BMW, while both are moving at 60 mph.) But the fight scenes, the climbing scenes—those I’m doing. The casualty today happened during a bar fight that should have—and would have—gone off without a hitch, except the guy who was supposed to smash a chair onto the bar top as I rol ed to the left screwed up and cracked the chair down right on top of me. The director cut the scene and cal ed a medic, but luckily nothing was broken. Muscle or no muscle, though, that shit hurts.
In comparison, the kiss went much better and was decidedly less painful. Chelsea and I have good chemistry, though not, perhaps, what I had with Emma last year. Stil , we nailed it in one take. I concentrated the entire time on not thinking of Dori. My level of success was questionable, at best. No matter what I’m doing to forget her, she pushes into my consciousness like a walking daydream.
John’s Words of Wisdom when I was trying to come to grips with Emma’s rejection: “The best way to get over a girl is to get under another one.” I listened to him then. For the record? That shit doesn’t work.
*** *** ***
Dori
Not until I see Dad’s face does my anesthetized shield begin to recede, leaving in its place pins and needles of feeling, sharp and stabbing, fear piercing through me at his distressed look. I find myself pleading in my head Deb, please don’t be dead. Please, please don’t be dead.
Just like that, for the first time I let myself consider the possibility. And then I shove it away violently.
I rush into his arms and he enfolds me tightly. “Dad, what happened? How is she?” I can’t breathe, demanding and fearful of the words I’ve been waiting hours to hear.
“There was an accident.” His voice is hoarse, tight. He swal ows and I want to say I know that already! I want him to skip to the end and assure me that she’s alive, but I bite my tongue and let him gather his thoughts and his courage and speak. “At the hospital, during her rounds. She… she slipped. There was a wet spot on the floor, and she slipped.
She fel and hit her head.”
Wet spot. Floor. Fel . Hit her head. This is terrible, horrible, but oh so much better than the accident of my imagination—mangled metal, blackened and twisted in the middle of a busy intersection. Infinitely better than the massive loss of blood, the scarring, the internal injuries, the potential paralysis, the possible fatality. I nearly giggle with relief, but it evaporates in my throat because my father hasn’t loosened his hold. “Dad?” My voice is muffled against his chest.
“She’s had a closed head injury, Dori. Before your mother and I arrived, she was unconscious, and then lucid and talking for an hour or so, but then her brain started swel ing, and they haven’t been able to get it to stop. She’s been unresponsive since we’ve been here.”
I pul away and look into his eyes. “Unresponsive? You mean like a coma? But why—? You said she slipped and hit her head, but I mean how hard could she have hit it—
she’s as short as me—we’re close to the ground, remember?” My pitch is somewhere between eager and hysterical, my mouth stil turning up into a smile because no part of me is accepting that word. Unresponsive.
He squeezes me tight and releases me. “Let’s get your luggage. I need to get back to your mother. We can talk on the way.”
We’re silent except for hol ow exchanges like I can carry this bag, you take that one. With the push of a button, he releases the locks on an unfamiliar vehicle, a compact SUV
in a jaunty red. The rental, more wel -appointed than either of our cars, smel s faintly of pine and strangers. We stow my luggage in the back, stil mute until our seatbelts are fastened and the engine has turned over, cool air blowing too briskly from the vents. I reach to the one aimed at my face and point it towards the window as Dad grabs my hand. I open my mouth to say Let’s go, let’s go, but his head is bowed and the plea hangs in my throat.
“Lord,” he begins, eyes closed, voice breaking, “we believe in your healing power. We believe in your promises.
You watch over the sparrow when he fal s. You were watching over my little girl when she—” his voice breaks again and I clasp his hand firmly, tears streaming down my face.
In that moment, I experience a blinding explosion of self-realization: I am two people. The Dori everyone knows is trusting, hopeful and light—like a spark, like a feather. I am ful of faith, and nothing is impossible.
The anti-Dori has been hidden away since her formation. She’s skeptical and riddled with doubt, doggedly probing dark theories of disbelief. In the wake of my father’s fragmented prayer, his gut-wrenching pain that echoes mine, it’s her words I hear. No fate, no destiny, no meant-to-be.
I want to believe that God is everywhere—in the miracle of life, in the love we have for one another, flying in the face of death. I want to believe there’s a reason and a purpose for what happened to Deb.
But there is no reason.
My two selves are old adversaries, forever circling, persistently employing the same inadequate arguments.
Each is close-minded, deaf to the other, and I cannot reconcile them.