Famous (20 page)

phones Brad * swigs vodka * mulls over his
amnesia and the impending automobile accident * into the ravine

I almost forget to call Brad. It’s not that
he’s an essential component of what I’m getting ready to do, but it
may expedite my rescue if someone misses me.

So I call him up, and he doesn’t even say
hello or anything.

Just answers, “Where in the hell have you
been?”

“I had a late night.”

“Another late night?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been calling you all morning, and it’s
two o’clock now. You still want to get some work done today?”

“That’s why I’m calling you.”

“Are you fucked up?”

“No, of course—”

“’Cause don’t even come to my house if you
are. I’m not in the mood to fuck around. We have real work to do. I
talked to Tom yesterday, and he’s ready to see it. Like next
week.”

“All right. I’m on my way. See you in
five.”

Brad hangs up.

On my way out, I stop by the bar and open
another bottle of vodka. I take four big swallows and head for the
door, eyes watering.

The vodka kicks as I tear down Laurel Canyon.
I’m feeling so happy about everything, and it’s not just the
alcohol. I told you about how I’d been forgetting things lately.
For instance, a few minutes earlier, when Brad mentioned that “Tom
was ready to see it,” I had no idea what he was talking about. I
don’t know Tom from Adam. And apparently, Brad and I are writing a
screenplay, but I couldn’t tell you what it was about. And at
Rich’s party last night, I didn’t know anyone who seemed to know
me. Even my childhood has become a fog. For instance, I know for a
fact that I grew up in the mountains near Missoula, Montana, but I
have these inexplicable memories of a small town in North
Carolina.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of my
amnesia, is that I’m beginning to doubt my acting ability. I’m an
Oscar winner. I have the statue to prove it. But if I’m forgetting
things as rudimentary as where I was born and who my friends are,
how can I be sure my acting hasn’t lapsed? And I’m supposed to read
for the lead role in the new Harvey Wallison picture next week? You
don’t walk into that situation
wondering
if you can act.

The top’s down on my Porsche, and the warm
Pacific sun rains down through the trees.

I smell the forest all around me.

The ravine is just ahead, but instead of
sailing on over, I bring my Porsche to a stop in the middle of the
road, take a deep breath, and buckle my seatbelt.

My heart pounds.

It’s a steep descent into that ravine. I hear
a car climbing the hill below, and it occurs to me that I should do
it now.

Close my eyes.

Punch the gas.

When they find me, I’ll be bruised but
intact.

Maybe a broken bone or two, a few cuts, a
bump on the head.

I’ll lay down there until someone finds me. I
hope it doesn’t take long. At least Brad is expecting me. That was
exceptionally clever on my part.

The doctors will scan and probe and test and
scan again, but they won’t find anything to explain my amnesia.
They’ll be perplexed as to why I don’t remember a thing about this
life, or any other.

But my condition will be accepted. I was in a
car wreck. No one will question that. And everyone will fall all
over themselves to teach me about my beautiful life.

The other car is close. Another ten seconds,
and it will be too late.

I jam my foot into the gas and accelerate
toward the edge.

Then I’m falling, flipping, trees and shrubs
and sky rushing by, the windshield cracked, a life passing before
my eyes that is not mine.

PART III -
MONTANA

Chapter 26

the thawing lake * tea with Pam * reads his
paper * debates whether to ask Pam about who he was * Montana
sky

My nose itches, and the lake is still
half-frozen. I heard the ice splintering again last night. The
remnants of this past winter—the iced lake, the snowpack on the
mountains—seem artificial on a morning like this, when the trees
are budding and a sweater is sufficient to keep a body warm.

I hear Pam walking back through the grass.
She sets a tray on the folding table beside me.

“My nose itches,” I say.

She rubs her index finger under my nose.

“Thank you.”

“I made tea for us.”

She fills our teacups.

The sun just reaches over that fin-like
mountain at the other end of the lake.

“Did you bring my sunglasses?” I ask her.

“Sure did.”

She sets my cup of tea in front of me and
puts on my shades.

I drink tea, even hot tea, through a long,
skinny straw.

Pam sits down beside me in the grass with her
cup.

They tell me she’s only my nurse, but she
feels more like a sister. She doesn’t sport nurse clothing. She
wears jeans and a wool sweater. She’s attractive.

“That man called again this morning,” she
tells me, and I ask which man she’s referring to. I still have to
be reminded of things a lot. That may never change.

“The man who called yesterday, and the day
before, and the day before that.”

“What does he want?”

“To see you.”

“What did you say his name was?”

“Bo Dunkquist.” From the way she says his
name, I can tell that she’s had to answer that question several
times.

I don’t know if I know him. I don’t know much
of anything really. For instance, right now there’s a piece of
paper in my pocket that tells me who I am and how I came to be this
way, but I couldn’t tell you what’s written on that paper. And when
I say “this way,” I mean paralyzed from the neck down and scarred
from third-degree burns over seventy percent of my body. That I do
remember. The scarring part especially. Sometimes, I forget that I
can’t move, but I never forget what my face looks like, all smooth
and hairless. I’m glad I don’t forget, because it’d be an awful
thing to have to see for the first time, day after day after
day.

But don’t feel sorry for me please. I’m not
in any pain now, and I have no memories of when I was.

“I want to read my paper,” I say. This woman,
whose name I’ve forgotten, reaches into my pocket, pulls it out,
and unfolds it for me. It’s sort of funny—I remember that I have
this paper, but I never remember what it says. You’d think if I
could remember the one thing, I could remember the other.

I read it. I think I read it at least once a
day, but I’m not sure:

Your name is James Jansen. You are 43 years
old. Right now you are at your cabin in the mountains of Montana
near the town of Woodworth. You are paralyzed from the neck down.
Your nurse’s name is Pam. She lives with you and will help you with
anything you need. Your sister lives nearby in Missoula. Her name
is Courtney, and she’s 37. You were injured four years ago in an
automobile accident when you lost control of your car and crashed
into a ravine. You were in a coma in St. Anthony Medical Center in
Los Angeles, California, until last September.

Before the accident, you were a very famous
actor. You won the Oscar (a very prestigious award) in 20--, for
your role in Down From the Sleeping Trees. You’re holding it right
now. Pam will tell you more about your acting career if you would
like to know.

Today is April 15, 20--.

I look down into my lap. There is in fact a
shiny gold statue between my legs, gleaming in the sun.

Wind comes across the water and blows the
paper out of my lap into the bright grass beside Pam. I hear the
wind moving through the fir trees. Chimes jingle on the back porch
of the cabin.

I start to ask Pam about who I was before the
car wreck, but I stop. I’ll bet I ask her that every day, and I’ll
bet she gets sick of having to tell me. Or maybe I just think I ask
her every day, and so I never do. Perhaps I’ve had this same train
of thought thirty days in a row.

So I don’t say anything. It’s easier to sit
here and not think and stare at the lake and the mountains and the
evergreens.

I’m not sad.

Not at all.

I don’t feel much of anything except
contentment to be out in this glorious morning.

Even if she were to tell me things about my
old self, I don’t think it would move me any more than the memory
of a dream, because the only thing real to me is this moment—the
wind-stirred lake and Pam and the blue Montana sky.

THE END

Interview with Blake Crouch by Hank
Wagner

Originally Published in Crimespree, July
2009

According to his website, Blake Crouch grew
up in Statesville, a small town in the piedmont of North Carolina.
He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
in 2000, where he studied literature and creative writing. He
currently resides in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern
Colorado. Crouch’s first book,
Desert Places
, was
published in 2003. Pat Conroy called it “Harrowing, terrific, a
whacked-out combination of Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy.” Val
McDermid described it as “An ingenious, diabolical debut that calls
into question all our easy moral assumptions.
Desert Places
is a genuine thriller that pulses with adrenaline from start to
finish.” His second novel,
Locked Doors
, was published in
July 2005. A sequel to
Desert Places
, it created a similar
buzz. His third novel,
Abandon
, was published on July
7, 2009.

HANK WAGNER: Your writing career began in
college? 

BLAKE CROUCH: I started writing seriously in
college. I had tinkered before, but the summer after my freshman
year, I decided that I wanted to try to make a living at being a
writer. Spring semester of 1999, I was in an intro creative writing
class and I wrote the short story (called “Ginsu Tony”) that would
grow into
Desert Places
. Once I started my first novel, it
became an obsession. 

HW: Where did the original premise for
Desert Places
come from? 

BC: The idea for
Desert Places
arose
when two ideas crossed. I had the opening chapter already in my
head... suspense writer receives an anonymous letter telling him
there’s a body buried on his property, covered in his blood. I
didn’t know where my protagonist was going to be taken though.
Around the same time, I happened to be glancing through a scrapbook
that had photographs of this backpacking trip I took in Wyoming in
the mid 90’s. One of those photographs was of a road running off
into the horizon in the midst of a vast desert. My brain starting
working. What if my protagonist is taken to a cabin out in the
middle of nowhere, by a psychopath? What if this cabin is in this
vast desert, and he has no hope of escape? That photograph broke
the whole story open for me. 

HW: Why a sequel for your second book?
Affection for the characters? 

BC: It was actually my editor’s idea. I was
perfectly happy walking away from the first book. But once she
mentioned it during the editing of
Desert Places
, I really
started to think about where the story could go, wondered how Andy
might have changed after seven years in hiding, and I got excited
about doing it. And I’m very glad I did, because I would’ve missed
those characters. Even my psychopaths are family in some strange,
twisted way. 

HW: Of all the reviews and comments about
your books, what was the strangest? The meanest? The nicest? The
most perceptive? 

BC: The strangest: This was a comment about
me and the reviewer wrote something to the effect that I was either
a super-talented writer with an immense imagination or one sick
puppy. I think that’s open to debate. The meanest: From those
[expletive deleted] at Kirkus. Now, keep in mind, this is my first
taste of reviews and the reviewer absolutely savaged my book. It
was so mean it was funny... although I didn’t see the humor for
some time. The review ended, “Sadly, a sequel is in the
works.” The nicest: That’s hard to choose from. I particularly
loved the review for
Locked Doors
that appeared in the
Winston-Salem Journal
. The reviewer wrote, and this is my
favorite quote thus far, “If you don’t think you’ll enjoy seeing
how Crouch makes the torture and disembowelment of innocent women,
children and even lax store employees into a thing of poetic
beauty, maybe you should go watch Sponge Bob.” The most
perceptive: The reviews that recognize that I’m trying to make a
serious exploration of the human psyche, the nature of evil, and
man’s depravity are the ones that please me the most. 

HW: Do you strive for realism in your
writing, or do you try more to entertain? 

BC: First and foremost, I want to entertain.
I want the reader to close the book thinking, “that was a helluva
story.” Beyond that, I do strive for realism. I want the reader to
identify with my characters’ emotions, whether it’s fear, sadness,
or happiness. The places I write about, from the Yukon to the Outer
Banks to the Colorado mountains are rendered accurately, and that’s
very important to me, because I want the reader to have the benefit
of visiting these beautiful places in my books. 

HW: The villain in
Locked Doors
seems
almost a force of nature, cunning, instinctively brilliant when it
comes to creating mayhem. Do you worry that readers might write him
off as unrealistic? 

BC: I decided to approach Luther Kite a
little differently than my bad guy, Orson Thomas, in
Desert
Places
. In the first book, I tried to humanize Orson, to gin up
sympathy by explaining what happened in his childhood to turn him
into this monster. With Luther et al., I made a conscious decision
not to delve into any of that, and for this reason I think he comes
off as almost mythic, larger than life, maybe with even a tinge of
the supernatural. I don’t worry that readers will find him
unrealistic, because I didn’t try to make him like your typical
realistic humdrum villain. What I want is for readers to fear
him.