The Deep of the Sound is one of my top reads for 2015. I contacted Amy Lane requesting an interview. She answered all of my questions and also gave an excerpt from her upcoming release Selfie. Selfie is available for preorder from Riptide Publishing.
Cal McCorkle has lived in Bluewater Bay his whole life. He works two jobs to support a brother with a laundry list of psychiatric diagnoses and a great uncle with Alzheimer’s, and his personal life amounts to impersonal hookups with his boss. He’s got no time, no ambition, and no hope. All he has is family, and they’re killing him one responsibility at a time.
Avery Kennedy left Los Angeles, his family, and his sleazy boyfriend to attend a Wolf’s Landing convention, and he has no plans to return. But when he finds himself broke and car-less in Bluewater Bay, he’s worried he’ll have to slink home with his tail between his legs. Then Cal McCorkle rides to his rescue, and his urge to run away dies a quick death.
Avery may seem helpless at first, but he can charm Cal’s fractious brother, so Cal can pretty much forgive him anything. Even being adorkable. And giving him hope. But Cal can only promise Avery “until we can’t”—and the cost of changing that to “until forever” might be too high, however much they both want it.
INTERVIEW
Hi,
Toni-- I'm so glad you enjoyed Deep of the Sound! I'm happy to answer
your interview questions, and since you liked DotS, which is from the BlueWater
Bay series, I was going to give you the cover and excerpt from Selfie, if
that's okay? Since they're from the same series and all ;-)
This
book deals with a lot of deep issues. How much research was required on these
hard topics? Was it difficult for you write through the characters' emotions?
Well,
I sort of did life research, as it were. My oldest son has a communication
handicap-- essentially a processing disorder, wherein he doesn't always
understand what language is going in and has difficulty putting ideas into
language going out. As he's grown up, many of his friends in school have had
Asberger's Syndrome or other autism spectrum disorders, and watching these
children become young men has been difficult. My son has two college educated
parents who make a decent income--go him! But the kids with less than ideal
family situations have less than ideal options as they get older. Many of them
end up with no job or no hope, and some even serve prison time. Watching my son
struggle with the idea that his childhood friends are now dangerous people has
hurt, and that's where Keir's character has come from. Cal could see his
brother as a child--and love him--but he had to deal with him as an adult, and
that's a little bit scary.
As for
Nascha? Well, my stepmother (Goddess love her) has walked her ex-husband's
mother, my father's mother, and her own mother from the nursing home to the
funeral home, because she's an awesome woman. And my mother's mother passed
away two years ago--the last of my grandparents, and I miss her now. I've seen
seniors in various stages of dementia, and that sort of betrayal-- that moment
of "Oh, wait, I'm the grownup now?" never ceases to hurt. One
of my trademark literary tropes is the strength of family-- but of all people,
I'm in a place to know that family can destroy us from the inside out. That's
where this book came from. I wanted to give some hope for the Cal's in the
world, who are burdened and blessed.
Is
there a certain type of scene that's harder for you to write than others? Sex?
Action? Death?
Actually,
"pedestrian movements" are the ones that make me nuts. In dance a
pedestrian movement is a transitional motion from one place to another--and I
usually find myself losing track of time, or which relative is where, or where
I left the gravy on the table. Sort of like in real life, the big stuff--loving
my kids, taking care of the pets, paying the bills-- that stuff I've got
covered. Keeping the kitchen table clean and doing the laundry? I am lost.
What
is your proudest accomplishment?
Besides
my family, it's making a living doing something I love.
Who is
or was your celebrity crush?
Hmm...
Jensen Ackles, for like, the last 11 years. Mmmm....
Do you
believe in ghosts?
Yes.
What
projects are you working on for 2016?
Oooh..
lots! I actually just completed a blog post about what's coming from Amy, and
you can find it right here: http://writerslane.blogspot.com/2016/01/coming-soon.html?zx=4aa8fa0c9ec90487
As for
what I'm writing right now-- it's the sequel to the Candy Man stories, and Lollipop. It's called Licorice Whip and
it's hard-- I took a character that most people would consider irredeemable and
made him the MC. People are going to hate him off the bat.
Favorites
Quote- "Knitting is like sex-- if I like you
and I want to, it's for free. If I don't, there's not enough money in the
world." Vanessa North, fellow knitting writer
Beauty product-hair oil. Thank God for it.
Celebrity-Jensen. Jensen, Jensen, and more Jensen. And Chris Hardwick.
Gum- Trident
Cereal- Cinnamon Toast crunch :-)
Beauty product-hair oil. Thank God for it.
Celebrity-Jensen. Jensen, Jensen, and more Jensen. And Chris Hardwick.
Gum- Trident
Cereal- Cinnamon Toast crunch :-)
EXCERPT
It's from Selfie
which is available for pre-sale from Riptide
right now :-) And I sort of love it a lot.
Chapter One
Can I Come In From the Out Now?
There was a terrible sound—a shrill cacophonic
assault—and I closed my eyes against the crippling brightness in our—my—beach
house and whimpered.
Oh God.
What had I done?
The cacophony erupted again, and I rolled to
my side, pulling the covers over my head, groaning. I’d left the patio door
open, and the ocean roared carelessly on outside. It should have been a
soothing sound, but my brain felt like a land-mine detonation facility. The
phone rang again, and another bank of explosives went off, including a few in
my stomach that would have sent me running to the bathroom if I could move.
I couldn’t move.
“Vinnie,” I moaned. “Vince . . . baby . . .
get the phone . . . Oh fuck.”
My voice pitched on the “fuck,” because I
remembered why Vince wasn’t there. Suddenly my hangover was nothing, a torn
cuticle, a pimple, a plucked hair, compared to that terrible, terrible voiding
pain of the severed half of my heart.
Vince wasn’t there. He’d been gone for 366
days, and he wasn’t coming back.
Nope, Con, I’m not there. You
need to get the phone, you lazy bastard.
The phone rang one more time, and I fumbled at
the end table and answered it because that beat the alternative.
“’llo?”
“Do we need a Bloody Mary?” Jillian Lombard’s
voice was like a spring-powered launch of ice picks, all of them driven through
my left eyeball to the back of the brain.
“I can’t do bitchy,” I whined. “Why are we
bitchy? Make the bitchy stop.”
“I’m sorry, sweetums, am I bitchy?” she asked
pleasantly. In the background I heard the sound of a lighter flicking, and a
heavily indrawn breath.
“You started smoking again?” I was concerned.
Jillian was in her early fifties and built like a fireplug. “That’s not
healthy, Jillian—I thought you’d quit.”
“I did,” she snapped bitterly.
“I did quit, because you and Vince were happy, and you were
making scads of money, and suddenly, my shoestring operation was in the black
and I could afford to worry about my health. Things have changed, buttercup, oh
how things have changed.”
I wanted to bitch and moan, but I couldn’t.
Instead I swung my bare legs off the white-sheeted bed, leaned forward on my
knees, and massaged the back of my neck, trying to remember grown-up skills.
I’d had grown-up skills once—I was famous for them. In a land where people were
prone to excess, where you had to talk your boyfriend into rehab once every
three years or so, the guy who didn’t drink too much, didn’t do too much blow,
didn’t party too much—he was considered a grown-up. I was that guy. I didn’t get
into fights, I didn’t slip up our little cover, I didn’t make scenes on set. I
did my job, I did it professionally, and I enjoyed the hell out of it—my God, I
worked hard on my reputation as a good guy in Hollywood, I really fucking did.
Or I had.
“I told you yesterday,” I said, after a heavy
silence between us. “I’m throwing my hat back in the ring. Go ahead—sell me.
I’m product. Auction me to the highest bidder. I’ll do it—I’m raring to go.”
My voice held all of the excitement of a
boiled eel. I was not, as I said, “raring to go.” I was, in fact, not raring.
And not roaring. And not going.
I was pretty sure that yesterday’s
conversation with Jillian, in which I pronounced myself so “raring,” had been
the beginning of last night’s bender. I remembered, I was standing on the
balcony, looking off into the poetic ocean distance, talking to Jillian and
taking healthy swallows from a bottle of Pinot Grigio. In my head I could hear
Vinnie chiding me for drinking what he called “flat 7 Up,” because I
never had developed a palate, and in my ear, I could hear Jillian
telling me that I’d been grieving for a year, and it was time to jump back into
the shark pond again.
“You wouldn’t say that to me if we’d been out
and married,” I’d snapped, aching. Because you got more time to grieve a lover
than a “bro,” didn’t you? With a bro, you were expected to carry on, but if
we’d been married . . . if we’d even been dating .
. . no.
For ten years Vince Walker had been my shadow,
my lover, my best friend, the one person on the planet I could tell my secrets
to. I’d chivvied him into rehab and supported him when he came out, and
together we’d been the nonparty boys, the most clean-cut actors in Hollywood,
hosting clean and sober parties in my place or his. We’d been photographed for
three years in a row, having Christmas in his place, with his family, and
pretending I only spent the night in his room on Christmas Eve so there could be
space for his brother and two sisters and spouses and kids and such to take
over his place for the holidays.
We’d bought houses right next to each other in
Malibu, but so what? So had Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, right? We were
like Alex O’ and Scott Caan, or . . . or . . . oh Jesus, who cared.
Because we weren’t like those guys at all.
We were in love, and we’d started working in
this business when you just didn’t fucking come out, not if you wanted to be
leading men in big-budget movies, and so we hadn’t. We’d just bought our big
fucking houses and took turns sleeping over and quietly building a life
together, only it wasn’t together, it was separated by two walls, a hedge, and
a big fucking swimming pool.
So, yeah. I may have been bitter when I told
Jillian that I was willing to be thrown back into the shark tank.
I must have been bitter
when I told her that. Because I remember taking a healthy swallow of flat 7 Up,
and then another one.
And then another one.
And then sitting on the
balcony, staring into the orange sunset, and thinking about Vinnie.
And then waking up to the phone.
“You’re right.” Jillian’s voice came from an
entire continent of pain away. “You’re right. I wouldn’t throw you back into
the pit if you’d been married. But do you think you could have said that
yesterday?”
“I thought I did,” I mumbled.
“Yeah, and then you said okay.”
“Then why are we having this conversation?” Oh
God. When Vinnie was alive I wouldn’t have gotten this drunk. When Vinnie was
alive, I’d very, very carefully only had a social drink of wine in company,
because Vinnie wasn’t drinking at all and I knew how hard
that was on him.
“Because it was most obviously not okay!”
Jillian burst out, an exhalation of smoke hitting her receiver as hard as her
voice.
“I don’t remember saying that,” I said
plaintively. Don’t make waves. Treat your
agent with respect. Remember, most people in Hollywood would sell their souls
to be you and sell you out in a hot second if they even suspected you and
Vinnie were an item. I remember thinking all
of that, but I don’t remember saying anything at all
resembling the truth.
“That’s because you didn’t!” she snapped,
setting off a trash-can chorus in my head.
“Then how do you know it wasn’t okay?” I
demanded, because God, it was like “Carol of the Bells” was being played in
broken glass between my ears.
“Uh, Connor?” For the first time something
akin to sensitivity tinged Jilly’s voice.
“What?” I asked suspiciously. “What’s wrong?
Why do you sound like that?”
“Connor,” she said slowly, and I remembered
the last time she tried speaking slowly to me.
My stomach wasn’t feeling great, and when my
bowels contracted in an icy heave I contemplated running for the bathroom. Oh,
dear Lord—no. How bad could this be? I’d already survived the worst, right?
“What? What’s wrong? Who’s dead?” I asked,
aware that after the last year this wasn’t hyperbole and not the least bit
funny. I needed to know how my world was going to be turned upside down as soon
as possible, so I could hide all the hurt and pretend it didn’t happen.
“Who’s dead?” she repeated. “Your career,
honey. You killed it last night on YouTube.”
I closed my eyes and tried to think. What had
been the last thing I’d done as the wine had weakened that brick wall between
myself and my grief? I remember seeing the camera Vinnie had kept on the
mantel. He’d been so good at social media—had taken short videos almost
constantly.
And then edited them.
On my computer, I had the
video of us kissing on a private beach, the camera held selfie-distance away
from our faces, my blond hair riotous in the wind and Vinnie’s shorter, darker
hair barely ruffling. We’d both closed our eyes at the end, and the camera had
dropped as we’d gotten lost in the kiss and the smell of the ocean and the wind
and the sand under our feet. The end of the shot had been a ragged series of
frames as Vince had struggled to turn the thing off one-handed so that kiss
could be the focus of our lives.
The world had the first part of that
picture—“Hey, here’s the sunset in Hawaii! And here’s my buddy, Connor, ready
to do some surfing!” I’d waved and winked, and lights out.
Last night, I’d looked at that camera, thought
of my computer memory, crammed full of what our life had really been, and
thought of what the world knew. Who cared, right? Who cared if the world knew
we’d been together since our first audition, both of us nervous and cocky at
the same time, neither of us getting the part.
It hadn’t mattered—we’d been in Vince’s shitty
one-room apartment about thirty minutes after leaving the studio, Vince filling
the condom inside me, both of us screaming loud enough to wake the neighbors.
I’d been sleeping in a burned-out car then,
two months into Hollywood after leaving my home in Northern California with the
scornful injunction not to come back until I’d stopped being a fag. (Well, you
know, get caught deep-throating the starter of your school’s basketball team
when you were a drama queer, getting kicked out of the house was bound to
happen.)
I’d been desperate—desperate enough to blow a
photographer to get my headshots. Desperate enough to have blown businessmen
for food.
Vinnie had let me move in that day—a little
banter, some hot eyeball action, and one quick fuck, and there we were,
sleeping on his twin bed and throwing in for rent together. It might not have
been love at first—in fact, at first I think it was mostly necessity—but after
a year, and a few successful auditions, and a little bit of fucking around on
both our parts, we had enough money to each rent our own apartments.
And we’d . . . decided not to.
Because what had started out as lust and
convenience had turned into something more. Something bigger. Something that
had us both getting tested and giving up condoms (most of the time)—but keeping
the lube.
Then I’d landed a supporting role in a small
television show on the CW. And then I’d been courted to be the leading man in
another one when the first one folded. That gig had lasted three years, and
when I’d left it because . . . reasons . . . I’d landed my first movie role.
B-level action flick, yeah—but it paid decent, and I got another one, an
A-level after that. Vince’s career had taken off too—he was usually the broody
guy who got offed, or sometimes the villain—but he worked consistently and got
paid well.
Eventually, Jilly (who had signed us by that
time—she’d gotten me the gig at the CW) said we had to
get houses. If we didn’t, the press would talk, the fan fiction would get out
of hand, our careers would be in jeopardy.
I remembered asking, “Can’t we just come out?”
Neil Patrick Harris had come out. George Takei had come out. Six years ago
there had been enough out celebrities that it shouldn’t have made a difference,
right?
Jillian had looked at me, pity in her
cobalt-blue-tinted contacts. “Honey, you’re just not that good.” She shook her
head. “Those other guys can do it because they’ve got balls-out talent—you and
Vinnie, I love you guys, you’re my first big hits and my bread and butter, but
you’re . . . you know. Beefcake. You’re decent enough actors to not embarrass
yourselves, but mostly, sugar, you’re just a pretty face.”
I’d done a shitty job of concealing my
hurt—I’d loved drama in school. I hadn’t wanted to be beefcake, I’d
wanted to be an actor, damn it! But Vinnie had let it roll off his back.
“Whatever you say, gorgeous,” he’d purred. “As
long as we’ve got backdoor access to each other’s pads, I’m good with that.”
But he’d looked at me searchingly over her head, with a little bit of pity and
fear. His family still loved him, and I knew because he’d told me
that he dreaded, more than anything, losing that support.
Jilly hadn’t seen that look, though. She’d
touched his nose like wasn’t he just the cutest thing? Vinnie got that a lot.
“You gay guys—you flirt like gangbusters, but do you ever put out? Done,
then—I’ll tell the real estate lady to look for properties next to each other,
relatively private. No one will ever know.”
And no one had ever
known. Ten years of a relationship forged in the crucible of Hollywood, and my
only proof was a laptop full of memories that only two people had shared.
And now it was down to one.
I pulled myself back into the present with a
sick thump. “Jillian . . . did I post a video last
night?”
Her laugh was weak and stringy and hysterical.
“Oh, honey.” I heard a shaky draw on the cigarette. “That’s like asking if the
Washington Monument is a little bit of an erection.”
***
I didn’t look. I couldn’t look
at my Washington Monument of YouTube selfies. Just getting out of bed and into
the shower took everything I had. After that, it was a fight against vomiting,
and I needed all my strength for that.
Forty-five minutes after Jilly hung up, she
was at my house—had arrived, in fact, while I was still in the shower. When I
emerged, a towel wrapped around my waist, I was surprised and touched to see
she’d pulled up my comforter and cleaned up the bottles for me.
Jillian was a four-time combat veteran of the marital
wars, and the mother of two. She hardly twitched a sculpted eyebrow as I
started rustling around in my drawers for some yoga pants and a T-shirt. She’d
once walked into the tiny bathroom of a guest-star trailer to have me sign my
next contract. I’d been taking a stellar dump at the time, but she hadn’t even
wrinkled her rhinoplasty. I loved her like a mother, but there was no doubting
the fact that she had iron-clad tits in a stainless-steel bra.
Or so I thought.
She was sitting at my personal desk, sifting
through my laptop browser when she cast a look over her shoulder and recoiled.
“Jesus, kid, you’re scrawny as hell.”
“I work out,” I mumbled, taking a hungover
look at my wardrobe. I had a maid service that came in and did laundry, which
was awesome—but all of my clean, pressed yoga pants and T-shirts had holes in
them, and I let out a sigh. Yeah, it had been a while since I’d gone shopping.
“Who gives a shit if you work out? Do you I?”
I tried to remember the last meal I’d had, and
drew a blank. “I must eat,” I muttered. “Otherwise, I couldn’t work out.”
“Right.” She shook her head and continued to
browse. After a moment, she sighed. “You let your porn subscription lapse.”
I made a hurt sound, and she looked back at my
computer like it held the secrets of the universe.
“And you’ve been looking at this file with
Vinnie every fucking day.”
I stopped searching for clothes without holes
and grabbed some boxer briefs, yoga pants, and a T-shirt and threw them on
haphazardly. The T-shirt was a basic cotton tourist T—we’d gotten it on a trip
to the Grand Canyon two years ago. For a while, we’d fought over it, playfully,
because we never let ourselves get photographed in the personal shit, and if
one of us woke up and put on that shirt, it meant he was staying inside all day
and hopefully not alone.
“What do you want me to say?” I was working so
hard on leeching the tears out of my voice that it came out flat, no affect,
dead.
“I want you to say you want to live!” she half
laughed. But she was looking at me soberly, and real concern showed, even
through the trowel-thick mascara and the psychotropic contacts.
“Jillian . . .” I didn’t know what to say.
She shook her head and waved her hands in
uncharacteristic agitation. I hadn’t seen her do that since the day we got back
from Vinnie’s funeral. I’d asked her if she wanted to come inside—basic
courtesy, really, I hadn’t expected her to take me up on it. The place had been
. . . Well, I’d needed to find a different maid service after that week.
She’d helped me clean up the broken glass and
the ripped-down curtains, all without a word. I’d apologized, humbly, feeling
like a spoiled child, as she’d sat me down with some delivered pizza and a
glass of soda, and she’d done . . .
That. Held her hands up, palms toward me, waving
them back and forth as she’d tried not to see . . . me. My pain. The thing she
couldn’t fix.
She did that to me now, and then glared, her
eyes watering. “This here is an intervention,” she said briskly, and we both
ignored the way her voice got thick. “Connor, you need to work again. You need
to see people again. You need a fucking goal, even if it’s just to know your
line and hit your mark and look into the goddamned camera. You want to see how
bad it is? You showed the world how bad it is.”
And with that she shifted aside so I could see
the computer. Then she hit Play on the Washington Monument of selfies.
I watched dumbly for a moment as the camera
came on, the lens showing a fish-eye view from the mantel in the living room.
The furniture was there, fabric couches, matching throw pillows, complementing
love seat and recliner, as well as the little conversation pit, and, against
the far wall, the 116” flat-screen TV.
Some bozo in board shorts and a tank top was
blocking the view, but he backed up like he’d been trained with cameras, and
knew about how far he needed to go to be seen in the whole frame.
I stared at my image for a moment. Jillian was right. I look like hell. My hair was usually sort of a sandy blond, but I
highlighted it because it was Hollywood. You could see about three months of
growth between my part and the blond, and there was some silver in that, even
visible in the grainy, badly colored shot.
You could see my ribs. Yeah, sure, there were
lumps of muscle, but you could see my ribs.
I had a sort of long face, with a bold nose
and a full mouth—when I was full blond I was an Aryan wet dream, really—and
really nice cheekbones, sharp and distinctive. It had been the cheekbones that
had convinced me I could make it in Hollywood when my parents insisted that if
I wasn’t following my father into farming I would pretty much only succeed as a
computer technician or an auto mechanic and nothing else.
I’d seen myself in the mirror, stared
longingly at my heroes on the screen, and thought, Look at that. We have the same faces. We can
be the same.
In the video I appeared . . . rodent-like,
almost, and feral. My prized cheekbones threw the thinness of my face into
stark relief.
I stared at my own image for a few wordless
seconds before it hit me.
“What am I doing? And why isn’t there any
sound?”
“There’s no sound through the entire thing,”
Jillian said irritably. “Did Vinnie not show you how to work the damned
camera?”
I gaped at her, and then I gaped at the
computer, because no. No, he had not.
I was actually grateful as I watched what
followed.
If you asked me on any given day what the
worst part of this video was, I’d give you a different answer on each and every
different day. I could point out the fact that my eyes were half-mast and my
mouth kept opening while I stared at the ceiling in between sentences. I could
say it was the beginning sequence when I seemed to be just yelling incoherently
at the camera, one hand on my cocked hip, one hand waggling my index finger
like a teacher drunk on his or her own power.
But it was obvious that I wasn’t drunk on
power.
My tirade, whatever it had been, ended, and
apparently it was time to fly. Yes, fly—flap my arms and run around the kitchen
and pretend to be an airplane or a condor or a butterfly or what the fuck
ever—I was gonna fucking achieve liftoff and zoom overhead, I just knew I was .
. .
Right until I face-planted, arms outstretched,
on the couch.
“Wow,” Jillian said, like she was impressed.
“Wow, that’s the end?” I prayed.
“No, wow, I can’t believe your luck that you
missed the floor. And you only wish that was the end.”
I looked at the counter below the frame.
“Seven minutes?” Of which we were apparently
only two minutes in. It went on. There was the Batusi and the bunny hop. At one
point I was singing—obviously singing—head back, belting it out. I tried to
read my own lips for a moment, before I gave up.
“‘Sloop John B,’” Jillian said without
glancing at me.
“What?” I could not seem to look away from the
. . . the train wreck of my life, on display for YouTube viewers everywhere. Oh
Jesus. I had over five hundred thousand hits, and it was less than twelve hours
old.
“It’s what you’re seeing. See? Right here, you
can see that last part.” Oh yeah. It was clear I wanted to go home.
“Oh!” And then, as a capper to the madness, we
both sang along with my silent movie self as the timer counted off twenty more
seconds of my career-dissipation light.
Holy fuck.
And then . . . Oh God. On the screen I was
sitting on the couch, one ankle crossed philosophically over one knee, leaning
on my elbow and talking earnestly to the camera.
And then . . .
“Turn it off,” I said thickly.
“No.”
I’d pulled up a picture on my phone and was
showing it to the camera. It was nothing incriminating, just me and Vinnie,
standing on my balcony, leaning back against the railing, sunglasses on, our
faces toward the sun.
We looked so happy.
The other me, the skinny, drunk, pathetic me,
just broke down and cried.
Then that same guy stood up and drew really
close, so close you could see my rib cage through my tank top, so close the
frame went black.
Jillian and I slumped in the desk chairs,
while I thought of something to say.
“I’m sorry, Jilly,” I managed after a moment.
“It’s my fault,” she said quietly. “I thought
you were okay. You said you needed time to grieve, I said sure—that’s what I
did. Gave you time to grieve. I didn’t realize you were here, all alone. You
weren’t getting better. You were just . . .”
“Just being sad,” I said, closing my eyes.
Behind them I could see that icky, rainy May morning we’d gotten back from the
funeral, when Jillian had come inside and helped me eat, and I’d told her I
just needed time.
There might not be enough time in the world.
“Well, you had a right.” She clasped my hand.
“I was sad—I don’t know if that helps, but I was sad as fuck. You remember when
I called Christmas Eve?”
I nodded. I’d been alone, in my house, while
Vinnie’s family had held a quiet celebration next door. They hadn’t asked me
over. They hadn’t known about us, of course, but you’d think they might have
asked Vinnie’s friend over, right?
I wasn’t sure if that meant they were
insensitive, or grieving, or just . . . just users, hanging on Vinnie’s fame
like my family had offered to do with mine a couple of times since I’d hit it
big.
I didn’t want to think of Vinnie’s family that
way. For a few years, I’d been able to pretend I had family for the holidays.
It had been nice. I didn’t have much to pretend right now—I could probably just
pretend they were grieving and had forgotten me.
That was easier.
“I remember,” I said, to try to pull myself
away from my post-Vinnie Christmas featuring me, a bottle of wine, a steak, and
a laptop full of memories. “You were the only voice I’d heard in a week.”
She rubbed the back of her neck. “Yeah.”
“Is my career over?” I had money in the bank.
I’d probably have to sell the beach house if I never worked again, but I could
live pretty comfortably on what was left.
“No.” Jillian rolled her eyes. “I thought it
was when I called you—man, my heart almost stopped. But I’m telling you, on my
way over here, I fielded about six different calls from people who want your
story.”
“No.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” She
simultaneously looked around for an ashtray and fished in her purse for
cigarettes. Vinnie hadn’t let people smoke in the house, but you know what?
Vinnie wasn’t fucking here.
Nice, asshole.
I’m not even sorry.
I opened the sliding glass door and grabbed an
ashtray from outside—we kept a few for guests. The wind caught me square in the
face, and I leaned into it, closing my eyes.
“God, I love the ocean,” I said, thinking
wistfully of when I’d have to sell the house.
“Do you?” she asked. I turned back inside and
set the ashtray down for her, and she lit her cigarette with a shaky hand and a
gold lighter.
I moved away from her and crossed my arms,
leaning against the doorframe and letting the breeze cleanse away some of my
despair.
“I really do. I wish I could live somewhere
like . . . like Oregon, or Washington, or even Crescent City. Somewhere it’s
cold.” Where it was cold, and the sky was blue, and the water fought an
endless, frothy battle for dominion over cliffs and outcroppings of stone.
“You know,” she said tentatively, “you’ve gotten
a couple of offers from television in the past months. A lot of shows are still
shooting up north. Are you game?”
I nodded, exhausted, even though I’d only been
awake for a few hours.
“Yeah,” I sighed, closing my eyes against the
sun. “I’d love to go do something like that. Something not . . . here.”
“Well, I think I’ve got just the thing,” she
said, checking her tablet. “It’s late—they might have asked someone else,
because shooting starts, like, immediately. Let me make a few
calls—it might be temporary, you know. Just two months of relocation, and then
back here. But it’ll be enough to get your feet wet. And the show films just
outside of Seattle—”
“Sounds great.”
“Do you even want to hear what it is?”
With my eyes closed, I could hear the two
pulses in the wind. The first one was the ocean, and it pulsed with everything
I loved.
The second one was emptiness. And it pulsed
with He’s not here. He’s not here.
He’s not here. Vinnie’s not here, he’s not here, he’s not here.
It was that second one that made me crave
another bottle of wine before I’d even eaten breakfast.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said honestly. “It’s
perfect.”
“What makes it perfect?” she asked, exhaling
smoke.
“It’s somewhere not here.”
Author Bio
Amy Lane exists happily with her noisy family in a crumbling suburban crapmansion, and equally happily with the surprisingly demanding voices who live in her head.
She loves cats, movies, yarn, pretty colors, pretty men, shiny things, and Twu Wuv, and despises house cleaning, low fat granola bars, and vainglorious prickweenies.
She can be found at her computer, dodging housework, or simultaneously reading, watching television, and knitting, because she likes to freak people out by proving it can be done.
Connect with Amy:
Website: greenshill.com
Blog: writerslane.blogspot.com
Twitter: @amymaclane
Facebook group: Amy Lane Anonymous
Goodreads: goodreads.com/amymaclane
MORE BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR
Go to http://www.greenshill.com/books.html for a full list
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