When I walked off stage one of my assistants ran up to me. “There’s an emergency call from Atlanta. It’s about your dad.”
He had died of a heart attack during his Oscar-night party at the club. Barnard Deen threw parties just to watch me give awards to other people. He was so demanding, yet so proud of me. He never believed in Granny Nettie’s visions, so I never told him I’d continued to see visions of my own. Now, gazing at my grandmother, who gazed back, I made myself breathe calmly while a shiver ran up my spine. Go away. Nothing good happens when I see things in mirrors.
She remained there stubbornly, as vivid as life. Her green eyes were almost frightening in their passions. Her gray-black hair flowed from beneath a tractor cap that seemed as exotic to me as the turban of a sultaness. She had died when I was twelve, not long after my last visit. Her mountain farm in North Carolina had been a world as different from my Atlanta life as any foreign country. My mother didn’t live long enough to raise me, and Granny Nettie didn’t live to see me grown. The two most important women in my life had died without telling me how to deal with reflections.
I blinked, feeling dizzy. The vision vanished. “Boss, are you all right?” Judi asked. “Do you want something to eat? You’re staring at the kiwi and broccoli as if they might bite back.”
I took a deep breath, laughed, and fluttered a hand to my heart. “Why, I don’t dare eat before a press conference. If I gain so much as one ounce, the porno culture will revoke my membership card.”
More laughter. I took another breath. I’m just hungry, that’s all. Just imagining what I’d really like to eat. Sometimes, a biscuit is just a biscuit.
A pair of double doors burst open. Six-foot-three-inches of elegant California business mogul strode in, dressed in gray Armani.
My husband, Gerald Barnes Merritt (never just “Gerald Merritt,” that was too plain) was thirteen years older than me, rugged, brilliant, rich, and yes, wildly sexy in his own right. He had Donald Trump’s flair for showmanship. We’d been married for less than a year, during which time Gerald bragged often to the media about his two beautiful ex-wives, his three beautiful grown daughters, and his successful ventures in real estate, computer technology, marketing, and now, me. Now, thanks to him, I would head my own cosmetics empire. Flawless, by Cathryn Deen. Actually, Gerald ran everything. He was the CEO. But hey, I was the face.
“Ready to announce your new business venture to the press, my gorgeous girl?” Gerald boomed, scattering my entourage like a rottweiller in a rabbit pen.
I preened in the mirror and avoided looking toward the mystical food platter again. “Oh, I don’t know. Can you see anything about me that could be any more perfect?”
He slid his arms around me from behind, angling his head to look at me in the mirror, but careful not to muss mounds of hair and the unblemished masterpiece of my Flawless face. I felt the ridge of his penis lightly teasing me.
“You couldn’t be more beautiful. I am married,” he said softly, “to the girl every man wants.”
Another strange little shiver went through me. Beauty is fleeting, but biscuits are forever. I smiled and shook off the silly thought.
I was the most beautiful woman in the world. Surely, I always would be.
Thomas
On a small portable television hanging from the café’s beadboard ceiling among the pots and pans, the world’s most beautiful movie star, Cathryn Deen, charmed me in ways so ephemeral, so classic that—like the faceless reporters asking her polite questions—I hardly realized she held me in the palm of her hand. Whether I liked her or not.
Dressed in a streamlined silver sheath, Cathryn sat on a chair in front of a poster of herself under the word, Flawless. Her voice was a husky come-on flavored with the honey of a wealthy Southern upbringing and just enough of a droll lilt to hint at self-awareness and maybe even true smarts. She tilted her face just so, and smiled just so, and a long strand of her dark hair fell just so along the perfect angle of her cheek. The expression in her deep-green eyes said she had never had a doubtful moment in her life, and, given a chance to kiss you with her luscious mouth, she’d make you forget any doubts you’d ever had, too.
Hypnotized, I stood in the café’s cheerful fire-trap of a kitchen while a herd of Delta’s immediate family, wearing the café’s signature uniform of jeans and The Lard Cooks In Mysterious Ways t-shirts, hustled around me.
“The Lord is my shepherd,” growled Delta’s sister-in-law, Cleo McKellan, slapping a Jesus Loves You sticker on the sleeve of my jersey as she passed by with platters of collard greens, squash casserole and pear-mayo-cheese salad perched on one arm, “but if He doesn’t lead you outta this high-traffic lane I’m goin’ to smite you.” Her husband, Bubba, hooted as he chopped onions into a pan of meatloaf. I shifted to an untraveled spot. She blew me a chaste kiss and disappeared through swinging doors to the dining rooms.
“Now, Thomas, that’s a beautiful young woman,” Delta said proudly, gazing up at Cathryn on the television. “She’s my cousin’s husband’s cousin’s daughter.” Delta repeated this information and the background story at every opportunity. I nodded vaguely.
There are reasons why some people catch our attention, why their charisma makes us think that knowing them, or even simply looking at them, will elevate us to a higher plane of existence. There are reasons why women send marriage proposals to famous killers in prison and men spend a month’s salary on a dugout-level seat at a stadium. We want to share the aura of fame, any kind of fame, to catch the tip end of that rainbow, as if it makes us special, too.
The allure isn’t the fame itself; it’s the promise that we aren’t just anonymous specks of life on a small rock in an obscure universe. Anyone famous—for any reason, even a bad one—has been fingered by a mysterious fate that seems to have ignored us. Someone so naturally awe-inspiring must be blessed. God has smiled on this person, and if we earn so much as a glance from that sacred source, then God meant to bless us, too. The ‘lightning in the bottle’ we talk about? That chemistry? Secretly we believe it’s not just random chance, not just good luck. It’s destiny.
Cathryn Deen had it. It. The surreal quality that separates the ordinary from the extraordinary. I’d seen some of her movies; my wife had been a fan of hers. The films ranged from pure fluff to serious melodrama, but one factor always made them shine. Her. She wasn’t a great actress, but she really did have what publicists and gossip hacks call a megawatt smile. Her luminous green eyes, filled with humor, intelligence and a tinge of self-aware vulnerability, made the whole package infinitely sexual. I can hurt you, but you can hurt me, too, she told us.
“Look at those eyes,” Delta was saying even now, standing beside me with a pan of biscuits in her chubby hands. “You know, Thomas, all the great actors and actresses have that look. Kind of a little sad, like they know this won’t last forever and the joke’s on them. You know what I think? As wonderful as it would be to be so beautiful or so handsome, they wake up every day knowing they’re one day closer to getting saggy and ordinary, like the rest of us. It’s kind of a curse, being special just for how you look.” She sighed, brightened and held up the biscuits like an offering. “‘Beauty is fleeting but biscuits are forever.’ That’s what Cathryn’s grandma, Mary Eve Nettie, used to tell me. She was a wild woman. Kept her maiden name, slept around without hiding it, voted liberal. People named the ridge after her. Wild Woman Ridge.”
I nodded again, gazing up at the television in a rare moment of peaceful arousal. Cathryn Deen was sex and mystery and sweetness and fantasy and ... magic. She was classic architecture in a world obsessed with tearing down icons. Put a fence around her; protect her from grim reality.
Delta elbowed me. “She favors me around the eyes, don’t you think?”
I came out of my trance. “Definitely. But I bet she’s too nice to dump water on innocent men who sleep under her oak tree.”
Delta frapped me with a dish cloth. I took the frapping like a man, picked up a bu
s pan and headed for the dining room. Even a volunteer bus boy with a hangover has his dignity.
Cathy
Laughing, I led my entourage through one of the Four Seasons’ highly discreet exits, designed especially for VIP’s. The hotel is one of the most famous celebrity hideaways in the world. Frank Sinatra sang by the piano in the main bar on his eightieth birthday. Renée Zellweger was mistaken for a cocktail waitress there, and good-naturedly took bar orders from a table full of businessmen. The front-desk staff speak a mysterious dialect of English, one with vaguely euro-Asian accents, as if imported from some elegant little country especially to serve celebrities. On any given day you can glimpse a number of famous bodies being massaged in private cabanas around the pool. The lobby bars are a swoon-fest of Hollywood sightings, and also are rumored to be where the most expensive hookers hang out.
A pair of valets ran to get my car, nearly tripping over their feet when they saw me. Ah, the power of a clingy, white angora sweater, black leggings, and knee-high Louis Vuitton boots with stiletto heels. I looked like a wholesome dominatrix.
“You wowed everyone at your press conference today, Ms. Deen,” one of the valets gushed. “You looked great.”
“Why, bless your heart.”
“Quit drooling and get Ms. Deen’s car,” a bodyguard ordered. The valet bolted.
I was trailed by two private security men, five publicists, two assistants, and one assistant to an assistant of Gerald’s. Everyone but me had a phone attached to his or her ear, and they were all talking, but not to me or each other. I laughed as I signed autographs for the bellmen. My entourage chattered on without me, as perky as parakeets on cocaine.
“Yes, the press conference was huge. Fabulous. Cathryn’s doing lunch with Vogue next week. Cover photos are under negotiation. Pencil us in for Tuesday, in New York.”
“Marty? Book Cathryn with Larry King for the twelfth.”
“No, Cathryn can’t do Oprah on that schedule. She’ll be in England to film a couple of last-minute scenes for The Pirate Bride. Sophia Coppola insists.”
“Hello, I’m calling for Cathryn Deen. Ms. Deen wants you to find her a great, authentic voice coach to work with her on Giant. Yes, I know she can naturally do a Southern accent, but Ms. Deen says a Texas drawl is very different from an Atlanta accent. She wants a coach from Dallas. No, not the old TV show. The city. Ms. Deen requires a city-Southern-Texas-rich accent for the film. She’s meeting with her producers and director this weekend . . .”
“Women like you ruin other women’s lives, bitch!”
The voice rang out as I was about to step into the open door of my Trans Am. The car was a mint condition 1977 T-top, black and gold. I halted with one high-heel on the door rim. Several scruffy young women darted from behind the hotel’s glorious palms, waving homemade signs.
REAL WOMEN DON’T HAVE TO BE FLAWLESS CATHRYN DEEN HATES REAL WOMEN
“You’re telling women to hate themselves for having ordinary faces and bodies,” one of the protestors yelled. “But you’re the freak, not us!”
My publicists formed a circle around me, like pioneers trying to ward off a band of angry Sioux. The protestors bobbed and weaved as the guards chased them. I was open-mouthed with amazement. “Why didn’t anyone tell me these girls were out here?” I demanded. “I could have invited them to the press conference. Listened to their concerns. Offered them a makeover—”
“Never negotiate with terrorists,” one of the publicists said. Seriously.
“Terrorists? Oh, come on. They’re just sorority girls with bad hair. They’re probably sophomores at Berkeley. Maybe I’m their class protest project. ” I called to the guards. “Bring them over here and let me talk to them!”
My publicists did a group pirouette to stare at me in horror. “Those girls could be carrying mace or pepper spray,” one said.
“Or a hidden bomb,” a second added.
I laughed. “Or iPods filled with horrifying Ashlee Simpson songs, or hair brushes with really sharp bristles, or . . .”
“Please, Cathryn. The hotel’s still full of photographers. If the press catches wind of this, these protestors will make the news and that’s all people will remember about the launch of Flawless Cosmetics.”
That got me. Gerald’s put so much work and money into this venture. I can’t ruin this day for him. I blew out a breath. “All right, y’all win.” They hustled me into the Trans Am. One of the publicists, a young man, put a hand to his heart as he shut my door. “Ms. Deen, I’m so sorry about this. If I ran the world, all the ugly chicks with big mouths would be sent to an island somewhere.”
I stared at him. I’d never thought of myself as the poster girl for men who thought women should keep quiet and look pretty. As I drove out of the Four Seasons’ elegant, palm-endowed shadow, the girls glared at me from behind the phalanx of security people. They raised their hands and flipped me the bird.
I didn’t know how to deal with people who weren’t in awe of me.
So in return I gave them a polite but completely inadequate beauty-queen wave.
Thomas
Just after dark, East Coast time.
Smoke break. Again I lounged on the weathered church pew at the edge of the café’s parking lot. “If Cathryn Deen ever comes here and gives us any attitude,” I told Banger, “I’ll hold her down while you eat her cell phone.”
He twitched his white tail in anticipation.
I lit a crumpled cigar butt I found in my jeans’ front pocket. Hand-rolled local tobacco—a North Carolina heritage—was a smooth smoke but hard on an empty stomach. I sniffed burning hair. A fleck of tobacco smoldered in my beard. A few quick slaps, and the beard was saved. I wouldn’t have to drop out of the ZZ Top lookalike contest.
More deep breaths. I inhaled the good smell of wood in nearby chimneys, the clean, springtime fragrance of earth, and the wafting aromas of dinner from Delta’s kitchen. The mountains curled a breeze through Delta’s cooking and carried it all over the Cove. Even out at my cabin I sometimes swore I smelled her famous biscuits.
“Hey, Mitternich,” Jeb Whittlespoon yelled from the café’s side door. “Poker at nine. Right after the dining room closes.”
I gave him a thumbs-up.
Poker at nine, drunk by midnight, sleeping with goats by dawn.
A typical Saturday night.
Around eight, I was bussing tables covered in red-checkered oil-cloth under old tin ceiling lamps that cast warm pools of light. The café was Mayberry, a Norman Rockwell painting, and a rerun of The Waltons all rolled into one. Ordinarily the atmosphere soothed me, but that night I felt edgy—not just the usual blue-black mood that came on as the sun set, but something worse.
The café was full of happy, wholesome families. They came to the Cove and nearby Turtleville for the views, the campgrounds, the trout streams and the hiking. Many drove up from Asheville but others came from as far away as Georgia and Tennessee. All of them shared one common goal during their visits: To dine at the famous Crossroads Café on huge plates of the best Southern home cooking anywhere, adorned with Delta’s mouthwatering biscuits.
Cleo, along with Delta’s daughter-in-law, Becka, hustled between the tables. Becka elbowed me. “Move your cute butt, Thomas.” Becka flirted with me harmlessly, tolerated me endlessly, and bossed me around. Cleo prayed for me. Both she and Becka warned their husbands to keep guns away from me when I was drunk.
I turned around with a pan full of dishes and found a little boy staring up at me. Gaping, mesmerized. He looked like Ethan. Even more than most. Every boy under five reminded me of my son. Every breath I took reminded me. Clouds reminded me. Toys in an ad reminded me. Spatters of fake blood on an episode of CSI reminded me. I wondered if I still had half a bottle of vodka under the truck’s front seat.
“Mister, are you a hillbilly?” the boy asked. His voice trembled. He was afraid of me.
The father rushed over. “He didn’t mean any harm.”
I could only nod.
Words stuck in my throat. A glance confirmed that everyone in the diner was staring at me. Six-four and bearded, wrinkled Giants jersey, faded jeans, old running shoes, blood-shot eyes. Topped with a ponytail and a long, wavy brown beard. Go figure.
Delta stepped between me and the worried customers, grinning. “Aw, this is no hillbilly,” she announced. “This is just Thomas, a crazy architect from New York City.” To me she whispered, “You know we all love you around here, but you’ve got a strange look in your eyes tonight. You’re scaring kids and giving hillbillies a bad name. Take a break.”
I nodded again, my throat aching. I carried the bus pan to the kitchen, then walked outside. I went to my truck, climbed in, and fished around under the seat until I found my vodka. The bottle was half-full, hurray. “Never look at a vodka bottle as ‘half-empty,’” I said out the window to Banger. “Be an optimist.”
The bottle’s screw-top made a neat arc to the truck’s rusty floorboard as I flicked it with my fingers. I had my rituals. Open a bottle, pull down the visor, then look at the pictures I’d laminated and taped there. Sherryl and Ethan on his first birthday, in Central Park, laughing for me among some flowers. And the other picture, the one from the archives of the New York Times, a picture like dozens of pictures that had been studied, analyzed, and archived.
A picture from the morning of September 11, 2001, when my wife jumped from the North Tower of the World Trade Center with our son in her arms. I touched both pictures with a fingertip, then took my first drink of the night.
Cathy
“Caaaathryn!” A car full of teenage boys passed me in an open Jeep, waving and honking their horn.
I waved back vaguely, still distracted from the incident at the hotel, I zoomed along California’s famous Ventura Highway in heavy traffic, headed northwest out of L.A. Other drivers waved and honked at me—mostly men and boys, putting their hands to their hearts. Tractor-trailer drivers blew their deep air horns as I zoomed past. I continued waving, sometimes smiling and blowing kisses too. I was gorgeous, I was rich, everyone wanted to be me. I was immortal.