Part 6 (1/2)
JAMES MATTHEWS.
Present Day ”Open up, Matthews. I'm coming in.”
”You said I had another day before you'd come back!”
”I say when it's time, and I say it's time now. So open up, or I axe the door down. Do you want me to use my axe?”
James Matthews clung onto his .38 pistol knowing it was a useless piece of metal against the man with the golden axe. The axe man's threats kept filtering through the boarded up windows. The planks and pieces were crookedly nailed into the walls. The blunt end of the axe knocked twice on the door.
”It's time, Matthews.”
”No.” James mouthed the word above a whisper, turning his head back and forth, thinking if he refused the idea long enough, none of this would be true. It would all just go away. ”Please, no.”
You can't take what I have.
I need it.
I know what it does.
I know more than you know. I know more than most do.
The man with the golden axe dragged the blade end of the axe against the door, peeling off tracks of paint one thin sc.r.a.ping at a time. ”I'm here to collect, Matthews.”
James rose up from his position hiding behind his kitchen wall. He could run, but the man with the golden axe always found him. And running from him, it made the axe man angry, and him being angry made the process hurt much more in the end.
”It's either the drill or the axe, Matthews.” Wildly scratching the paint now, the man's voice boiled over into rage. ”What's it gonna be, Matthews? What's it going to be? Huh, you old b.a.s.t.a.r.d? The axe or the drill?”
This time, the axe pounded home, striking the door once. The blade split its way to the other side. The golden edge gleamed, and seeing it made James cry out, ”The drill! Please, please just put the axe down!”
James opened the front door, dropping the .38 pistol, and falling to his knees in apology. James clasped his hands together and begged the axe man, ”Please, please give me the drill!”
ON THE ROAD AGAIN.
Another day of driving and another hotel stay later, they were in Arkansas and pa.s.sing through the city of Bentonville. After traveling with few breaks for so long, they were more than ready to arrive in Blue Hills, Virginia. To pa.s.s the time before they reached their destination, Hannah kept reading from her script and laughing at the bad dialogue. Brock interrupted her latest read through to ask, ”How did you get into acting anyway? I'm ashamed I didn't really ask you that question before now. I guess with fanfare, you get tired of answering those kinds of questions.”
”Ah, not really.” Hannah batted her eyes. ”I could talk about myself all day.”
”So start talking about yourself. What was your first break into the biz?”
Hannah put down her script and had to think a moment. ”Honestly, I won a cereal box contest. My mom sent in my picture to the company. Five weeks later, I'm flown out to L.A., I get this make-over, and I'm sitting a kitchen table in a real Hollywood studio eating Rainbow Flakes cereal, and my only lines were, ”Mommy, I love Rainbow Flakes. After that, I became obsessed with acting. I think I scared the neighborhood kids with the intensity and conviction I had when playing house. I was a homemaker, and G.o.d-d.a.m.n it, you were going to enjoy my baked cookies and hospitality.”
Brock took the next exit. ”I can see you taking acting seriously. You'd shove one of your friends' head in an Easy Bake Oven if they crossed you.”
Hannah smiled and continued her story. ”After graduating high school, I moved out to L.A., worked my a.s.s off busting tables as a waitress, and after nearly a year, I get my next break. Tampon Girl #2.” Hannah raised her voice before Brock say a word. ”I was in one of those movies for high school girls to teach them about menstruation. It was such a dumb scene. All I did was run into the bathroom during cla.s.s with the teacher yelling at me that I didn't have a hall pa.s.s. I meet another girl in the bathroom who is also going through her period, and we talk each other through it, and guess what? She has a tampon for me, and after school that day, we become best friends. We actually meet up at an ice cream shop and eat ice cream cones together.”
”Sounds like the plot of a p.o.r.no.”
Brock expected a punch to the arm and received it.
”I'm sure you're the source of a lot of giggling in cla.s.srooms,” Brock said after the hit, remembering the health cla.s.s videos he watched back in the day. ”I wish I got to be the kid who had to ask his coach about wet dreams and the pros of masturbation.”
”Well, the short film got me a role on a sitcom, and then two years after that, a co-starring role in a romantic comedy that's a rip-off of Mork and Mindy with a s.p.a.ceman coming down to earth to find romance. It was cancelled before its first season was up. Then I got into enough movies, I found myself doing more and more westerns, and then I met you.”
A guilty pang hit Brock. Now that he listened to her story from beginning to end, he really had put the kibosh on her career. He had done the same to Angel too. Brock was tearing up thinking about it, but he drove on hoping she wouldn't notice. Instead of words, Hannah leaned her head against him and petted his stomach. She understood what he was thinking.
They kept driving.
Brock's thoughts drifted to Angel. He grew apprehensive imagining how his first encounter would go down.
Hannah read into the looks on his face. ”You're not going another mile without telling me what's going in that head of yours, Brock.”
”I'm stressed about Angel. It's like bracing yourself for a punch that has your name on it, and you've done things that merit that punch, so there's no way out of it except to, well, to get punched.”
”I think she'll appreciate you coming to visit. Sure, she's got issues she's going to deal on you, but it'll help you both. How's that journal been working out?”
Brock had kept the journal tucked under the seat of the car. He made a few more entries during the trip, one of them d.a.m.ning towards Hannah. He hated writing it, but it flowed through the pen and onto the page anyway: Angel isn't the only one I've seen in precarious situations after men have finished with her. Hannah was also a regular at my parties. I once caught her pa.s.sed out on my black leather sofa naked except for the rug she'd pulled up from the floor and wrapped around herself. Open condom wrappers were strewn in the vicinity, but I can't be for sure they were used on her, but I know somebody had some fun with her. Her panties were across the room. I don't judge her because I've woken with up with strange women in my bed before. I'm so glad what Hannah and I have now is so far removed from that. I'm taking out the bad memories and replacing them with good ones. And that's the thing about Angel. Does she have any good memories, or are they all bad? If there isn't any good for her now, there's no way she's going to kick the habit.
Brock finally replied to Hannah's question. ”It's going alright. The journal is a self-confessional, so it's not going anywhere near publication. I have locked up skeletons in my head, and I have to free them.”
”I think it's a great idea. I used to write a journal as a kid. It was about stupid stuff. What I wanted for my next birthday. I drew pictures of my dad dressed up as a princess because he'd never play dolls with us. He was a machismo guy. Maybe I'll start writing in one too. Would you ever let me read yours?”
”Now what kind of a question is that? It's deep down and personal. It's unabridged material.”
”You don't trust me?”
”I trust you.”
”Then let me read it.”
”Why?”
”Because I want to know what you think about the past. It's about when you had the mansion, right?”
She was backing him into a corner, and Brock had only one true weapon to redirect her from the conversation. ”White cake or chocolate cake for the wedding?”
Hannah smiled. ”Well, that's a loaded question...”
She laid out each specific detail of the wedding, and when she was finished, they were only 22 miles away from Blue Hills, Virginia.
BLUE HILLS, VIRGINIA.
Exiting the interstate and riding on a less traveled highway for twenty minutes, Brock and Hannah ended up in a heavily wooded area of bright green maple, chestnut, hickory, and oak trees. ”Welcome to deciduous city,” Hannah said under her breath, reading the homemade sign on the road, what was made perhaps by a child, how the letters were painted crooked. Hannah rolled down her windows. ”Smell that fresh air. Oh, this is so much better than the city. When we retire, we have to get out of Beverly Hills.”
”Once I pay off my debts, and if my show lasts long enough, I can build up a nest egg. I'd be up for living in the country in a heartbeat. But if you're going to be a movie star again, and we're married, your money is my money, ri-ght? Imagine if I hadn't blown my dad's estate? I'd be able to take you to so many beautiful places. We'd retire right now. I could treat you like a princess.”