Chapter 59 - My Hubby Comes Home
The dog went nuts, barking like a fiend, which startled them in the living room, considering they’d only heard him talking, or rather sensed his telepathy, for the last eight weeks. It’s a wonder he still knows how to bark. Gale said, “That must be them. Don’t be nervous, he’s not going to kill you.”
She and Tommy and Jinny and Richard were in the living room, desperately waiting for me and Roger to get back from the airport so they could pour the cabernet that was sitting in the decanter on the coffee table. Bark bark bark came from the kitchen, then hearing the back door open, and voices. Three voices, the dog doing the barking for show but now switching to telepathizing to welcome home his master. None of us has figured out if the telepathy is a sound or an internal sensation a la the buzzing and bizzing of the Special’s cloud. Again Gale told Tommy not to be nervous, which of course made him nervous.
We entered the living room where Roger found Jinny sitting on the piano stool, grinning at him, Richard on one of the French chairs, looking cowardly but studious, as usual, Gale and a guy on the sofa, her draped around him languorously and protectively, an upright piano against the wall near the Steinway grand, and a new coffee service on the sideboard, shining like a cluster of comets that had grouped together for warmth and become enmeshed in the gravitational field of the sideboard. He smiled at each of them, especially Jinny, whose acquaintance he had made while pointing a gun at him and saying, “My name is Roger June; you stole from my auntie; prepare to die,” him saying that because he liked the movie The Princess Bride so much. Then he looked around the room at the walls, finally saying to me, “So where is it?”
“Where’s what?” I deadpanned.
He looked at Jinny and said, “Was she lying to me all this time, making it up, pretending she was doing exciting stuff and wasn’t bored without me?”
“Lying about what?” depanned Jinny.
Roger smiled again and turned from Jinny to Tommy, who untangled himself from Gale and stood up. He walked over and said, “I’m Roger. Nice to meet you. You the investigator?”
Tommy said, “Tommy Crown. I was.”
Gale grabbed the back of his shirt, pulled him down on the sofa, and said, “He was the investigator, but we broke him of that shit. Now he’s a Junie.” She kissed his ear wetly like only she can do, then stood up herself, crouched, and leaped over the decanter sitting on the coffee table and into Roger’s arms, who caught her like a champ.
He said, “I see you’ve been busy while I was away,” and then he got a wet one right on the mouth. When she finished he looked at Tommy and said, “You wanna trade for a while?” He set her down, looked at the decanter, picked it up and smelled the wine, said, “Screaming Eagle, 1996. That cost me $1200. Who broke into my wine cellar?”
I took the decanter out of his hand, picked up a glass and poured some cab into it, handed it to him and said, “Whose wine cellar, stranger?”
He said, “At least you saved some of it for me. How many bottles y’all drink without me?” He looked at Richard, smiled and said, “You embarrass us in any new books?”
Richard said, “You still think they’re about you? You and your boring wife? Why would I waste time on that?” and he smiled back at Roger.
Gale said, “He’s going to try something new. Not another novel.”
“What?”
“A screenplay. For a movie.”
“What’s the movie about?”
She looked at me and said, “You wanna tell him?”
“Later,” I said. “Let’s get a couple glasses of wine into him first, makes him easier to handle.”
Jinny poured for the rest of us, each getting our $200’s worth of wine, which was fabulous. The dog said, “What about me?”
I looked at Roger and said, “He’s been working on his sense of humor while you were away.”
We sat down and I could see him start to relax. A sixth of a bottle isn’t much wine, and our $200’s worth was gone quickly. He said, “No painting, but we have a new silver service, antique table, and piano. Not many people have two pianos in their living room, one being a concert grand and the other looking suspiciously like the one George Gershwin wrote ‘Summertime’ on.” He didn’t look at me, but stared at his empty glass.
Gale said, “The silver service is mine. I just haven’t had time to get it over to my house.”
Roger looked at Jinny and said, “The piano yours? You going to take it over to your house soon? It just resting here a while?”
“The piano’s Gwen’s. The table is mine,” he said.
“The table have a story? Anything to do with the egg guy?”
Jinny said, “You remember it from the museum?” Roger nodded, and Jinny said, “It’s the one and only.”
“And now it’s here, in my living room? The one and only Faberge table?” Jinny nodded. “How much is it worth?”
Jinny said, “Don’t know, but I aim to find out.”
Roger looked at Gale and said, “Your new silver. It come from the museum too?” She nodded. He looked at the dog and said, “I left you in charge. I go away for a few weeks, my wife pinches a famous painting, which now has disappeared, and I come home to find three stolen objects in my living room worth about ten million dollars. And,” looking at Tommy and then back at the dog, “a former insurance investigator is sitting here, drinking my very expensive wine. You got anything to say for yourself?”
He said, “Don’t blame me. I didn’t marry Gwenny June, you did. All I got outta this was some lousy meatloaf. If it wasn’t for me, things would be a lot worse. I kept a lid on it the best I could.”
He looked at Jinny and said, “I think we need to bypass the second bottle of wine and move right onto the Sidecars. How about you mix up a batch?” Jinny nodded and went to the liquor cabinet. Roger said, “Jinny, make it a large batch, ok?” Jinny nodded, not really needing to be told that.
He turned to me and asked, “What’s the plan, darling?”
“You’ve got a month to yourself. You can work on the film, play with me, play down in your wine cellar, drink yourself into a stupor, take the dog for long walks and teach him some manners, whatever you want.”
He said, “I like the play with you option the best.” I smiled at him, my hubby, back in my arms. “Then what? After a month of sensational love-making?”
“Then we start the next production.”
“What production?”
“We’re going to make a movie.”
He didn’t blink, like most guys would’ve, but said, “First a ballet with Townshend, then a rock opera with McCartney, then a movie with Soderberg and Clooney, and now another movie?”
Tommy looked at Gale and said, “You didn’t tell me about a movie with Steven Soderberg and George Clooney.”
She said, “I forgot.”
I said, “That’s the plan. Unless you have something better to do?”
Roger said, “What’s the movie about?”
“The Specials. In the museum. Gwendy and her friends.”
He thought about that, deferred the obvious question, asked, “How we paying for it?”
I looked at Jinny, who said, “Table.”
Roger looked at him, then at the Faberge table, and said, “You’re going to sell the table and use the money to finance the movie?”
Jinny nodded and said to all of us, “I told you I had a plan.”
Roger said, “How are you going to sell one of the most famous antiques in the world? Now one of the most famous STOLEN antiques in the world?”
“Rich guy in Saint Petersburg. North Sea oil. Buddy of Putin. They won’t ask any questions, not about getting back something Russian. Not about a Faberge thing.”
Roger nodding, accepting all of this as normal for his household. He said, “Why a month from now? Why not start right away?”
‘That’s my baby,’ I thought. I sai
d, “We have to wait a month for the screenplay. Then we can start.”
Everyone looked at Richard, who impatiently was waiting for the Sidecars, which Jinny had finished mixing and was pouring into coupe glasses. He sensed the stares and looked up. Gale said, “You got a month to write the screenplay. That’s it. Better not drink too much tonight. You gotta be fresh tomorrow, get started.”
Now it registered with Richard, who said, “A month? Screenplay? A month? No way.”
He looked around at each of us, which was like looking down the barrel of a bunch of twelve-gauge shotguns. He said, “Oh shit.”
The dog took pity and said, “I told you, if you get stuck, I’ll help. We can do it.” Richard slugged back his drink and held his glass out to Jinny for a refill.
We all sipped our drinks, except the dog who went into the kitchen and sloshed up some water from his bowl. I looked at my hubby and said, “You glad to be back with the family?”
He said, “God, am I.”
Epilogue
You thought I forgot about that minor plot line, didn't you? Yeah, you did; admit it.
But not 'mind like a steel trap' Dorrance. Not me, never happen. And now that I have disabused you of that notion, now you're trying to hang something else on me, thinking, not only did the lame brain forget a plot line, forget to tie it up at the end of the book, now he's taking the easy way out with this chintzy epilogue trick. Instead of going back into the manuscript and doing another revision like a real writer would do, a man of honor, finding the right place and producing another chapter that would tie it up with dignity, he doing this thing; this chintzy thing.
Well, that's not true either. I had this planned all along. The epilogue has a long and distinguished pedigree in littrature, and it is a right and proper vehicle for this situation. So there!
The plot line in question has to do with Westlake who, I have to admit, is a bit of a lame brain, but I can't have all the characters be like Donny. You remember him, right? Adonis, Gwen's boyfriend. Anyway, here's what happened with Westlake.
Richard woke up the next morning to find two things in his bedroom: a smashing headache inside his skull, and the dog sitting next to his bed, staring at him. He said, "What time is it?"
The dog looked at his watch and said, "Seven am. Rise and shine."
"Are you crazy? Get out of here. Come back at noon," and he pulled the covers over his head.
The dog thought, 'A true friend's work is never done,' took hold of the covers with his teeth, and pulled them off the pathetic human being. What he saw wasn't a pretty sight. Even at his best the writer wasn't much to look at, and now....yuck. He brought his herding skills to the front, nip nip, and soon the guy was sitting at the kitchen counter, downing a morning cocktail of aspirin and coffee. He said, "I need a little hair of the dog mixed in here."
The dog said, "No way. You got work to do."
"What work? I'm retired."
"You know what work. The screenplay. We got thirty days, and the clock is ticking. It's not like you've done this a dozen times, know what you're doing."
"Leave me alone. I'll start tomorrow."
"Gwen sent me over here, said you're starting today, and that's that. Get your ass in gear, or the next one won't be a little nip."
"You'd actually bite me?"
"I'd actually do what Gwen told me to do."
Richard said, "She better be careful about pushing me around. I got plenty on her."
"Stop with the stupid bravado. You couldn't go up against her with the 82nd Airborne at your back."
He knew that was a fact, and said, "Let me finish this," taking another handful of aspirin and another slug of coffee.
The dog collapsed into a modified sphinx formation after his exertions and said, "So how much did you make off the bet?"
"What bet?"
"The bet that you could guess how the story ended, and you could write the last chapter of the book first, and put it on the internet, and challenge people to bet you wouldn't get it right. How much did you make?"
"Oh, that. It's not over yet. It's still going on. They're still betting online, and it's doing pretty good."
"So how much you make so far? Or how much you lose so far, more like it."
"No, I got it right. I knew Gwenny would return the painting to the museum, and that's what I wrote in the last chapter. So I'm winning all the bets."
"How many are there? Bets."
"Last time I looked, quite a few. Some people really got into it."
"How much did they bet?"
"Mostly small amounts, but a few bigger ones."
"So how much you make?"
"About forty."
"That all? Forty bucks?"
"Forty thousand."
That made the dog uncross his front legs, sit up, and look at the writer with more respect. Given his writing skills, who'da thought he could pull this off. After a minute, during which Richard poured himself another cup of coffee, the dog said, "That oughta keep us in loaf for a while."
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Richard Dorrance lives in America's most beautiful town,
Charleston, South Carolina.
You can look at other books on his website: richarddorrance.com
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