Jack Be Nimble: Gargoyle (4 page)

The Banked Light

Paris, France

6 PM

Jack looked up suddenly from the café table as wind shook the panes of glass a few feet from his head. The gusting beyond the glass transferred a portion of the night’s chill into him, etched an icy sharpness down his spine. It was only a matter of minutes before the storm would decide to begin in earnest, gashing down through the City of Light, carving at it with knives of lightning and rain.

Twilight always took too long in Paris. If he took the time, Jack could actually see darkness creep out from the heads of the alleys down Montmartre, could watch the shadows steal out from behind the statuary in the Luxembourg Gardens, could glance up in time to grasp the gathering gloom underneath the cornices and balustrades. Jack didn’t have to look at the sky to feel the skein of dusk draw over the city at the approach of night, the approach of the storm, but he could, if he took the time. Twilight always took too long in Paris.

The table before him was littered with a dozen tightly-bound manuscripts, sheaves of a hundred and twenty words apiece baled with bright, heavy cardstock covers and filled with sparse, widely-spaced type. The white spaces between the lines seemed enormous and stark to Jack, too empty. He shook his head and closed the screenplay, turning once again to contemplate the hurtling, intransigent approach of night.

He sat there at the window, pensive and unconsoled, feeling a thousand dark eyes upon him. He’d dressed carefully, in what he’d come to consider his armor against the night. Jeans and a loose sweater always allowed him to move quickly if circumstance demanded, and he didn’t feel so much like a ridiculous American. You could always tell the American tourists in Paris, if not by their baseball caps and ill-fitting pants, then in their guarded, slightly self-conscious gait, as if they were inwardly cradling some fragile bits and pieces of home. Almost all of his countrymen he’d met on their first visit to Paris showed the same inconsequential discomforts. They always looked distracted; they always spoke just too loudly, and they always ordered too much food.

It wasn’t a matter of pride, but Jack could silently acknowledge the fact that he’d never needed such personal reassurances. It used to privately please him that he found himself comfortable anywhere in the world he found himself, though he’d never felt it was a point of personal arrogance. He was merely comfortable. Jack’s adaptability, the ductile, elastic disposition he counted as his greatest gift, usually afforded him a sort of peace. Even so, that night in Paris, in the Helmut Lang jeans and Prada sweater that had become his agile armor, he felt as if his body was shod in unfeeling lead. He pushed the pile of screenplays away from him.

Victoria would have laughed at that. She would have smiled and shoved the whole bulk of paper back into his lap, told him to choose a good one this time; think three movies ahead because you never knew where your career was headed and (smirk) she didn’t want to leave him for a more glamorous star. And Jack would have picked another great one, and Victoria would have said she picked that one too, how strange.

He couldn’t do it anymore; couldn’t fill up the gaping spaces in a movie script with his own life, his own essence–transform the blocky words on the page into something that beat and sang and shouted with a life of its own, even if only on dry film.

She was gone, and he couldn’t do it anymore. She was gone.

*

Carly Bateman paused a moment as she exited the women’s restroom, and looked across the busy café at her friend. As always, Jack fit in without really blending into the background–the cant of his head, the line of his shoulders, the way he lifted his thick-glassed cup for a sip of chocolate, and a thousand other little details–she could almost believe he’d lived the entire span of his life here in Paris, perhaps selling bolts of bright cloth on the street near the Sant-Pierre market, or sketching famous skylines from the Place Emile-Goudeau, arguing shading and angles with the ghosts of Picasso, Braque, and Matisse. She smiled at the thought.

Jack was, as always, delicious to the eyes. As she’d noticed with many of the people in his line of work, once he had your attention it was actually difficult to look away from Jack. Just last month Entertainment Weekly had devoted an issue to the “science” of physical beauty, and the section on smoothness of action and symmetry of facial features focused on her friend Jack. She’d thrown it in her bag along with the scripts she would show him, thinking he’d get a good laugh out of it.

Jack always maintained that real beauty and classic appeal was found in how people recognized their imperfections, which she thought was funny. Jack was perhaps the most physically peerless man Carly had ever met, and that was saying a lot for a woman whose business life revolved as much around the buying and selling of an actor’s image as it did his or her talent.

He possessed both talent and image, though those weren’t the reasons Carly counted Jack her friend. From the moment she met him, his genuineness had captivated her. It had surprised her how–it seemed a lifetime ago, now–he listened to her, honestly listened. From the moment she’d met him—

*

San Francisco, California

She leaned against the bar with her arms, careful to keep the weight off her burgeoning abdomen. Slowly, Carly pushed up until she was standing completely on her toes. Even in her bigger pointe shoes, it was so hard. Her leotard was too tight; she could barely breathe, and every movement caused her shoulder straps to gouge painfully into her skin. She pushed away from the bar and tottered to the center of the practice hall. Carefully, carefully, Carly settled all her weight on one foot, squaring her shoulders and extending both arms and her free leg into an arabesque. Slow, even piano music filled the room and echoed off the polished floor.

She faced away from the door, away from the bank of mirrors along that wall. She had no desire to glimpse her bloated, pimpled face. Mark had told her once that her face was like a painting by Raphael. Mark’s hands, tracing along her cheek. Mark’s hands . . .

Carly spun, floating into a pirouette. She was weightless. She was an angel again. Her eyes slipped shut as she took the small steps that would lead into a pas de bourrée couru--

Abruptly, the baby within her shifted, throwing its strange compactness against her ribs, and she stumbled to the side, falling, too slow to save herself, slipping, too slow again to get her feet under herself, trying desperately to twist to keep the weight off the baby, but falling–

And then she felt lithe hands around her, under her, and arms that were strong enough to catch her up and set her again on her feet. Carly gasped with relief as the room righted itself and resolved into a blond young man. His face was tinged with guilt and concern.

“
I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that!” He helped her into a chair. “The music was so loud, and you looked so — well, you looked like something out of heaven, to tell the truth. Sorry. Are you Caroline? The girl at the front said you were Victoria Moran’s roommate, and you’d know where she is. I’m so sorry to startle you like that.”

“
Not your fault,” she wheezed. “Lucky I didn’t roll an ankle. Stupid, stupid!”

“
Maybe,” he conceded. “But at least you know you can actually do it.” She looked up at him, confused. He smiled. “You can
still
dance, Caroline.”

*

Jack was different this time; quieter. Oh, he’d greeted her warmly enough yesterday at the airport, and during their cab ride into the city he’d been his usual talkative self, telling her the same jokes he’d been repeating since the day they met—but something was definitely amiss. If she hadn’t known him so well or so long, Carly wouldn’t have seen that his joviality and utterly
normal
composure was merely a veneer, a sheen Jack had decided to cast up between the world and whatever demons rode his soul.

“Well, so, Jack?” Carly slid into the seat across from him and swept the scripts into a tighter pile, smiling as she rearranged them. “Next time the waiter comes by, order me another cappuccino. Should keep me awake till I get on the plane.”

He nodded at the scripts. “Plenty of money sitting there, Carly, but I’m not sure. How many historical dramas are they planning on doing this year? Don’t take this the wrong way, but seems like everything you send me lately is either a remake of something that was already done right in the first place, or so morally bankrupt I can’t even ask my friends to watch it and still keep a straight face.” He stirred his chocolate absently, frowning. “I know its not your fault, but really, why all the junk lately?”

Carly spoke briefly with a waiter, then said, “Jack, you should see the garbage I don’t even show you. Any given week, I have to throw out maybe eighty percent of the stuff that comes into the office. Almost everything here is from other agents. There’s a couple you should look at, anyway.

“The one with the blue cover, the Celtic thing, is already in preproduction. Branaugh is lined up to direct, and Schramer’s going to edit it. I told them you’d come on–
if
you come on–in two weeks or so, now that Cyrano’s done over here.”

She held up another. “He knows you’re a big fan, and Dean Koontz called a few days ago about
Lightning
. You’re a few years young, but he wants you to play Stefan.” Carly smiled. “You shouldn’t have told him so much about your childhood. He asked me when you were going to have a phone installed over here.”

“Okay, those two are pretty good, but—you’re right, Carly, I’m being picky. My writing’s taking up too much time lately, and with Cyrano finishing up—”

“What are you writing about these days? I read your one about the guy coming back from the dead to protect his girlfriend.” Carly saw a glimmer of something--amusement, maybe?–across Jack’s countenance.

“Something along those lines. I don’t think I’m ever going to have a hardcover bestseller. My prose is too goofy. And I can’t help but slip in the action scenes.”

She picked up her white napkin and began rolling up an edge as she spoke. “I keep wondering how a nice guy like you knows so much about exotic poisons and military weapons and things like that.” She began rolling another edge of the napkin.

“It’s not that hard. I read a lot. The thing is—well, it’s the same with these scripts, Carly. I’m just—I have a tough time making myself believe the way all these stories wind up. So trite. I mean, can all the problems in life tie themselves up and get solved within a few chapters, a couple of hours? Everybody needs a break from reality now and then, but—”

Carly smiled and touched his hand. “You don’t need to explain it to me, we’ve been friends long enough. Look, you know how good this stuff is.” She tapped the stack of scripts. “Everybody back home knows I came over to try to get you back in the business
in front
of the camera instead of just as a writer, but that’s got to be up to you. You don’t just quit after five great movies in five good years, not counting that documentary that the Academy liked so much.” The waiter brought her a large cup crowned with froth, and Carly took a sip before continuing.

“I think it’s great that you're over here, that an Idaho boy is doing Cyrano in Paris–in
Paris
, for crying out loud–and you’ve got a book on the bestseller’s list, but Jack, enough of this business of reinventing yourself European. When are you going to come home?”

Jack pressed his hands hard into the tabletop. “Home?” An brittle slice of bitterness crept around the edges of his voice. “And where is that exactly, Caroline? Rodeo Drive? Hollywood and Vine? Do I even–ah, sorry.” He looked away. “This isn’t me. This isn’t the person I want to be. Sorry.”

Carly covered his hand again with hers. “Jack. Jack, I’m going to keep coming around. Don’t worry about me.”

He looked back at her, silent. Listening.

“I’m one of the people who owes you, whether you like it or not.”

Jack flinched a little around the eyes. “For Victoria’s sake.”

“No, not just for Toria—Lord, she married somebody as mulehead-stubborn as she was.” She signaled for the check. “Either of you get an idea in your head and forget to eat or sleep until you’ve made it real. Not that we ever had the money for food in those days.”

The haunted look in his eyes was quickened by a flicker of merriment. “I remember when you two were living on Gatorade and those checks sent by the phone company.”

“And you had to give blood so you could afford to take us to dinner!”

She watched him start to smile, but joy had no momentum within Jack, and the smile never quite came together. Carly gathered the scripts together and filed them into her leather bag. “I had copies of all these sent to your apartment. Take your time.” She sipped her cappuccino. “Call me if you find a project you like, Jack, but even if you don’t, call me. It never used to bother me when you’d disappear for a month or two, or when you’d take Toria with you wherever, but lately—” Her eyes, deep and liquid, filled with concern. “You seem like you’re looking for . . . trouble.”

He shifted in his chair. “Don’t worry, Carly. Thanks. I’ll be careful. And I’ll read some of these, too, I promise,” he added. “We’d better call a taxi, if you want to make your flight home.” Jack paused and considered her. “You’re a good friend, you know that?”