Adulation (47 page)

And then, just as he was about to lean in, he tripped over a pair of sneakers he’d left on the floor and banged into the mirror. He fell back, tripping on the sneakers a second time, and covering his nose with his hands and yelping.

Dez rushed in from the other room the moment she heard the crash.

“What the hell happened?” she asked.

He had fallen on his ass and was rocking from side to side like an injured football player, his hands over his face while his nose throbbed. “My nose!” he exclaimed in a muffled voice and couldn’t help but conjure an image of Marcia Brady. “Son of a bitch!”

“What’d you do?”

“I hit the mirror with my face,” said Danny.

“What were you doing so close to the mirror?”

“Reciting dialogue.” Danny took his hand away from his face momentarily and went queasy when he saw blood.

“You what?” asked Dez, startled.

“I was reciting dialogue when I saw something in the mirror and wanted to see what it was, and then I tripped.”

“You tripped?”

“It was dark in the room.”

“Why didn’t you turn on the light?”

“Because I was practicing dialogue,” said Danny, as if the answer was obvious.

“I don’t understand—you’re writing shows about wrestling now?”

“I think it’s broken,” he said.

“The mirror?”

“No, my nose!”

She pulled his hand away and inspected his face. “It’s not broken, but it’s going to swell up big time. You should probably cancel tomorrow.”

“I don’t wanna cancel tomorrow.” He felt a shooting pain across his lower back just as he said the words, and winced. “Oh, geezus.”

“Suit yourself,” said Dez. “But you’re going to do a signing looking like a raccoon with bad rhinoplasty.”

Danny moaned. “Call a doctor, please.” He would decide about whether to cancel after he got a couple of painkillers in him.

She called the Plaza concierge, who sent up an on-call physician. The doctor inspected him, made sure he hadn’t gotten a concussion and assured him that his nose wasn’t broken and, once the swelling went down, would be good as new. “No Owen Wilson for you,” he said and laughed as if he’d been the first to think of such a joke.

The next morning Danny awakened to a splitting headache and a nose the size of a basketball. At

least  that was how it looked and felt to him. It had swollen and bruised in purplish-greenish hues and had spread to under his eyes, just as Dez had predicted. Everyone told him to cancel his appearance at Whitford’s Books & Café—Dez, the doctor, even Ella. He’d taken a photo of himself with his cell phone and sent it to her, to receive a text message in return with the word “gross” in block caps and excessive exclamation points, followed by an actual phone call. He sent the same photo to Jackson, who practically screamed at him over the phone. “Cancel! Cancel, you asshole! You’ve already done the biggest store there. You’ll probably get the exact same crowd tonight from the other two stores. For God’s sake, we don’t want this to be a Grateful Dead tour.”

Danny shrugged as he inspected his face in the mirror, careful not to get too close this time. “You’re probably right,” he said, sounding doubtful.

“Incidentally, how’d you do it?” asked Jackson.

“I was reciting dialogue,” said Danny.

After an extended pause, Jackson replied, “Yeeeahhh, how ’bout we say you got into a bar fightinstead.”

“Right. Because a recovering alcoholic would get into a bar fight.”

“Punched out one of the paparazzi?” suggested Jackson.

“With my nose?”

“Really?
 
Reciting dialogue
 
is the story you wanna go with?”

“It’s the sad truth, man,” said Danny.

“Hell, it’d be more plausible to say you got it during sex. Or that Charlene punched you out after

you broke up with her—are you still broken up with her?”

He rubbed his pounding temples. “Yes, Jackson. I’m still broken up with her.” He didn’t blame Jackson for asking the question, given how his and Charlene’s relationship status moved like the weather patterns. “But that’s going to be the rumor, isn’t it—that she punched me out.”

“Just go with it, man.”

“Great.”

“Anyway, cancel the gig.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said. He hung up the phone and said out loud to no one, “Yeah, I’m not canceling this gig.” Then he popped a painkiller and napped for two hours.

Of course, he couldn’t tell anyone why he didn’t want to cancel the signing: that he was holding out hope that perhaps this would be his last chance to see Sunny, to say something, to make amends and then go on with the rest of his life. And he’d made a deal with himself when he began the tour: If she didn’t show up, then that was that. He would finish the tour, go back to LA, spend time with Ella, and move to New York regardless. Whenever he started a new script, Danny always needed to know two things: the beginning and the ending. He especially needed to know the ending—knowing where his characters were going to wind up somehow made it easier for him to get them there. Or maybe he just didn’t like uncertainty.

He felt a dull throbbing in his nose.

Thanks to a tractor-trailer accident, Danny spent two hours in a Suburban stuck in traffic on the Long Island  Expressway. The pain from his black eyes and swollen nose was starting to return—he’d not takenanother painkiller because he didn’t want to be too zonked out—and he tried to sit back and close his eyesand avoid telling himself that he was indeed an asshole for not canceling this gig, which, at the moment,he was dreading like a summons to jury duty. Screw it all—he just wanted to go to sleep.

“How much longer to you think it’ll be?” he asked the driver.

“Soon as we get around this thing, we’ll fly like a rocket,” answered the driver in a hybrid of British and Middle Eastern accents.

When they finally arrived at Whitford’s Books and Café, the lot was packed with cars. Hewatched as people pointed to the Suburban, excited expressions on their faces knowing who was behindthe tinted windows, and nausea settled in him.

He was over the adulation, he decided. Just like that.

The driver steered the car around to the back of the store, parked alongside a faded yellow V olkswagen Beetle, and Danny saw a door open from the building and a woman emerge. She approachedas he thanked the driver, put on a pair of lightly tinted sunglasses, and exited the Suburban.

It took her less than a nanosecond to notice the flesh-colored bandage poorly concealing thebulbous mass of ugly on his face. She cringed, but quickly recovered with a smile and emphatically shookhis hand. ”What happened to you?”

“Funny story,” said Danny, “I was reciting dialogue, when—”

Before he could continue, she asked if he was feeling all right, did he need anything, would he be OK to do the signing, did it hurt? Yes, no, I certainly hope so, and it’s not so bad—all true but the last. More like I-now-know-what-it-feels-like-to-have-a-Mack-truck-drive-straight-up-your-nose.

“I’m sorry—where are my manners? Welcome! I’m Angela, the store manager.” She spoke severaldecibels louder than was necessary, or at least that’s how it sounded to him.

She held the heavy door open for him, yet as soon as he entered he followed a few steps behindher as she took him through the stockroom, a well-organized maze of shipping boxes and metal shelvingand clipboards and a workstation that Danny noticed had been decorated with, among other things, a V olkswagen Beetle shaped from yellow Play-Doh with number-two pencils sticking out of it, like somesort of automotive voodoo doll; a
 
Winters in Hyannis
 
cast poster (very rare—he had never seen oneoutside of his own office); and an old touch-tone telephone plugged into a jack. It looked a little like the Bat Phone from the campy sixties
 
Batman
 
TV series.

“Our stock manager is a huge fan of yours,” said the manager, whose name he’d already forgotten. He looked around for signs of life, but didn’t see anyone else.

“Where is he?” he asked, curious.

The woman turned her head, “Oh, he’s not a—”

Before she could finish her sentence, another door swung open and another employee (alsofemale) entered, firing off something about additional books needing to go out and where were they? Shethen noticed Danny,  smiled, and waved casually, unfazed by his celebrity. “Oh, hi,” she said at the sametime the manager replied something about Kenny knowing where they were. And yet, strangely, theemployee asked, “Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” said the manager, who then led Danny away from the door that opened to the store,down a short, claustrophobic corridor and into a conference room barely big enough to hold an oval tablethat seated no more than eight. “You can wait here, and I’ll call you when we’re all set up and we’reready to introduce you.”

“Thanks,” said Danny.

She peered at him. “Are you sure you’re OK?”

He nodded. “Just a little wonky from the meds, but I’ll be fine. I’m really sorry I’m not at my besttonight, but I didn’t want to cancel and disappoint anyone.”

“Well, we certainly appreciate that. You just sit tight, and someone will come for you in a fewminutes. We’ve got plenty of bottled water on hand at your signing table and plenty of snacks.”

It occurred to Danny at that moment that he hadn’t eaten in several hours, and his stomach rumbledas if to corroborate.

“Thank you...I’m sorry, tell me your name again?”

“Angela.”

“Thank you, Angela.”

She left him alone, and the place fell silent. He contemplated putting his head down on the table, but thought better of it. What felt like hours but couldn’t have been more than five minutes later, he looked at the picture window opposite him and watched an effeminate man enter through a different door than the one the manager led  him through. For a moment he thought the man might be Kenny the stock manager (for some reason he’d put the two together), but decided he was too well dressed to work in a stockroom.

“Hello, Danny. I’m Georgie Spencer.” Danny shook his hand firmly. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person. I’m the outreach coordinator here—not that that means anything to you. I’m in charge of planning events such as these.”

He smiled. “Nice to meet you.” He sensed they’d met before, but after so many signings and so many events, it wasn’t surprising to have that feeling. Perhaps it was the way he greeted Danny so informally.

“Heard about your schnoz from Angela. Looks painful. You OK?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“Ready to go?”

He nodded. Georgie held the door open the same way the manager had, and once again he lagged behind slightly.

“It’s a full house,” said Georgie, turning back to look Danny in the eye when he spoke. “That’s good for us, of course, but it looks like you’ll be here all night. We’ve got ice packs for your hand if it cramps up after all the signing.”

“Thanks.” Of all the stores he’d been to, this was the first to be so thoughtful, and he said so.

“Today’s my last day at Whitford’s, actually,” said Georgie.

“Really? How come?”

“I’m getting married. Hey, congrats on the Oscar. Nice speech too.”

“Thank you. Did you see the film?”

Georgie nodded. “Premiere night. Was quite a show,” he said. Danny wasn’t sure what he meant by this.

“Well, I’m glad you liked it. And hey, good luck to you.”

“Thanks,” said Georgie.

Angela had just finished the introduction. “Ladies and gentlemen, Danny Masters.”

All heads turned in his direction, and they erupted into applause and cheers and whistles. Once again he became nauseated, just like when the Suburban pulled up to the store, and he attributed the visceral reaction to painkillers on an empty stomach. He walked alongside the crowd down an aisle cleared for him, the applause sounding like popping balloons rather than the usual sweet melody. He approached the podium, took a swig of water, and discreetly asked Angela for a candy bar. She then leaned in to Georgie and relayed his request.

Danny had been speaking briefly at these events. There wasn’t much to say, really. He praised bookstores, their employees, and patrons, which usually drew a smattering of applause. He would then explain that although he often recited the dialogue aloud while writing his scripts, he didn’t like to
 
read
 
it aloud to an audience, for he couldn’t do the words justice. Without the actors, directors, locations, lighting, scenery, props, and music, they were just lifeless words on a page. And yet, that said, he believed and hoped that anyone who bought the book could bring them to life in his or her own way, perhaps with the intention of learning to write scripts by reading along while watching the films or episodes. He was proud of each and every one of these scripts and every single person who helped get them to the screen, and he was grateful to everyone who bought a copy and supported him throughout his career. This would draw more applause and cheers.