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Near London
Harrison D. Carter, known to those few who loved him as Harry, leaned back in his director’s chair and sighed.
‘Cut,’ he muttered under his breath, barely audibly, but the word was picked up by his mic and by the lackey at his side, whose job it was to attend to Harry’s every whim, even to the point of doing his yelling for him.
‘CUT,’ the lackey yelled and turned to his boss, ready for the next command.
Harry closed his eyes momentarily, as if considering a life-or-death choice: to cut the wire on the ticking time bomb or turn and run for the hills.
‘THAT’S A WRAP,’ he announced loudly, enjoying the resonance of his own voice. He stood at once and strode, back straight and head high, off the set.
Back in his makeshift office, Harry set about mixing himself a drink in the blender – the concoction of wheatgrass, green tea and eye of newt that his dietician had prescribed. While he was searching for a glass, the door opened, and Jennifer Fairchild, his PA, stepped in.
‘You must be over the moon,’ she said. Jenny’s tone, as usual, was preternaturally upbeat.
Before Harry could even begin to formulate an honest answer, Jenny had ducked to open a low cupboard and emerged with a highball glass. She held it out towards him so that he could pour his drink into it. His hand, as he lifted the weight of the full jug, began to tremble.
‘Here,’ said Jenny, ‘let me do it.’ She took the jug, poured the drink and handed the glass back to him.
‘Thanks, Jen.’ He took the glass. ‘Want some?’
‘Blended Kermit?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘No, thanks. Do you want me to fix you a real drink?’
Jenny was a trouper. With the sort of money she had behind her, she needn’t have worked a day in her life, but she seemed to get a kick out of helping people. It was like her gift or something.
‘Ya know something, Jennifer?’
‘What’s that, Harry?’
‘You’ve been doing things to make my life better since the first moment we met.’
‘That’s okay.’ She dismissed his compliment with a smile. ‘You pay me for it, you know.’
* * *
Harry had been on location in Mexico. He’d decided to skip home early to surprise Rita, his second wife, on what was the first anniversary of their wedding. He took the offer of a lift back to L.A. in his leading man’s Gulfstream IV. His house, when he got there, was deserted, but he made an educated guess as to where he was likely to find Rita. There was a jazz club in The Glen Centre where the piano player knew her name.
When Harry walked into Vibrato’s bar, Rita was sitting on that same pianist’s lap, his fingers playing arpeggios up her thigh and disappearing beneath the twinkling hem of her sequined bottle-green dress. Harry watched, disappointingly unsurprised, as Rita stretched out her foot in obvious excitement and dangled her silver sandal with virtuoso expertise. It was at this precise moment that Harry decided they were done.
Eager to back out of the club unseen, Harry had stumbled and dropped his keys. Flushing with embarrassment, he bent to pick them up – and somehow bumped his forehead on a table leg. Was this really his life now? No wonder she, his soon-to-be-second-ex-wife, wasn’t satisfied. He was past it. He stooped to try again for the keys and felt his dodgy knee creak.
A dark-haired elf appeared, as if from nowhere. She was wearing white palazzo pants and a white shirt that looked like it was probably silk – demure but buttoned just low enough that he could see the lace edging of a white bra. She seemed the very antithesis of Rita. She was wearing a string of pearls, for Pete’s sake. She looked classy. She looked safe.
This elf placed a slim, warm hand between his shoulder blades, rubbed his back as though she was thrilled to have located her closest friend at a raucous party.
‘Can I help?’
That was Jenny.
The following morning, over breakfast in her bed, Harry had made an effort to let her down gently. He told her all about Rita and the piano player. He told her that it wasn’t her; it was him. He told her that, while he thought she was damn near perfect, he wasn’t in the market for any kind of relationship.
She’d touched a finger to his lips to make him stop talking. She wasn’t in the habit of picking up men in bars, she’d said, but he’d looked too adorable to resist, with his sad eyes and his poor bruised head.
‘You looked so needy – I couldn’t help myself.’
Christ, thought Harry. I was once a god.
‘All I need,’ he said then, ‘is somebody who can find me a new place to live, pronto.’
